


suddenly i took the chance

by obsetress



Series: and she taught me a lesson alright (or: flora and her two moms) [2]
Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: (and by occasional i may or may not mean "frequent"), (the rating will probably pop up to e at some point), Alternate Universe, F/F, Flirting, Fluff, Found Family, Let's Go!, all the good things!, anyway, flora and her two moms!, i missed this perfect lil family and i hope you did too, occasional smut, so let's jump right back into it yeah?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:08:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29121687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsetress/pseuds/obsetress
Summary: A collection of oneshots set in the universe of "and she taught me a lesson alright," a Flora and Her Two Moms AU by means of single mom Jamie and teacher Dani.(It's not required reading if you're not feeling it, but the context is definitely helpful. Plus, hey, you might like it!)
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Series: and she taught me a lesson alright (or: flora and her two moms) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098725
Comments: 135
Kudos: 299





	1. only seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re halfway through dinner when Jamie clears her throat.
> 
> “Flora,” she says, “how was seeing your friends today?”
> 
> Flora’s eyes flit nervously over to Dani, then back to Jamie, uncharacteristic in her brevity. “Good.”
> 
> “How is”––Dani can see Jamie’s teeth clench, watches Jamie immediately catch herself, reach for her wine glass instead––“James?”
> 
> Dani takes a heaping bite of potatoes, smiling around her fork, and her free hand drifts under the table to light along Jamie’s thigh, reassuring.
> 
> Flora lowers her fork to her plate, eyes wide, glued to Jamie’s, as if afraid to look away. “He’s good,” she says carefully. “I actually… I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who hasn't yet read "and she taught me a lesson alright," it's not required reading before getting into these, but I'd certainly recommend it if only just for context. (And because I hope you like it!)
> 
> For everyone else: hello! I've missed you.
> 
> Between life happening (so much, so fast, all the time) and getting out my last fic (if you have an affinity for fluff, anniversaries, or 5+1s, I encourage you to check it out!), I got a bit behind on my schedule for this, so I want to thank y'all for your patience.
> 
> It feels so good to be back in this little universe and writing the Taylor-Clayton clan, and I hope it continues to bring y'all as much joy as it does me. I look forward to your comments and thoughts, and continue to welcome any and all prompts, either here or over on tumblr at marisas-coulters.
> 
> This first one comes from two prompts (and hints at a third!), the first of which is from theneverendingstory and demon_limbs (the long-awaited "Flora's seventeen! And dating!"), and the second of which is from Shananigans402 ("Dani and Jamie having to deal with an angsty and difficult pre-teen or teen Flora lol. Just love the idea of one and or both of them getting really frustrated and then having to calm each other down").

Flora’s seventeen.

Flora’s seventeen, and Flora’s dating. 

Flora’s seventeen, and Flora’s dating, and Flora thinks Jamie has no idea.

Dani, on the other hand, thinks it’s ridiculous that the two of them don’t know better by now, isn’t sure why they even bother.

She watches them over dinner, Flora chattering on, happily as ever, about her friends as she absently twirls a heap of spaghetti neatly around her fork. “…and,” she’s saying, eyes sparkling, “James even brought his _guitar_. I can’t quite believe no one else had thought of it before, bringing a guitar to a group picnic. It was wonderful.” 

Dani’s eyes slide over to Jamie as Flora speaks, anticipating the clench of her jaw, the tightening of her hand around her fork.

“Reckon lots of people have thought of it before,” Jamie mutters.

Dani slides her socked foot from its resting place against Jamie’s and around her ankle, tugging lightly.

It’s a reminder, a gentle one, and Jamie sighs, resting her fork softly against her plate, reaching across the table for the plate of garlic bread in the middle instead.

Flora’s doing the same, and their eyes meet above the neatly stacked slices (Jamie has long since given up her adamant adversity to Dani’s insistence that everything, but especially garlic bread, be drowned in butter, her stubbornness ceding to Dani’s smug grin) before they both reach for the same piece.

Dani has always marveled at Flora and Jamie, at the sameness that, for all their difference––it crops up from time to time, basking in the glow of a department store dressing room, Flora insistent that Dani, for all her pastels and the prettiness of her prints, not Jamie, serve as her primary attendant, or driving lessons, Dani’s cool breakdown of defensive driving winning out over Jamie’s protested “but learning stick will be _useful_ , Flora”––permeates their shared existence. On some level, Dani understands that that’s the point, knows that that’s how DNA works.

It’s how motherhood works, too, she thinks to herself with a small smile: the way she knows Flora’s needs before Flora speaks them or even realizes them herself; the way Flora’s own nuances, the subtleties of her personhood, are second nature to her now, Dani cleanly cleaving the crusts off of Flora’s sandwiches without thought, still, butter-laden breakfast sandwiches nostalgic and boundless on Flora’s plate in the mornings; the way the intricacies of Dani’s character have blended so seamlessly with Flora’s after nine years that Dani isn’t sure to whom they belonged first, only that now every time they’re both in the car or in front of the television, the volume gets turned to an even number, or that now, every time they pass a body of water, whether by foot or on wheels, they hold their breath, deep and decisive, until it’s passed.

With Flora and Jamie, though, there’s something more at play, Dani recognizes, something deeper even than breath or the depths of lakes flooding out before them as they pass them by. It’s the confluence of two rivers, she thinks, mind torn between the family in front of her and the geography lesson sitting on her desk in their shared office, near-identical for their predetermined parallelism as they run and, yet, each a force on her own, forced into an unflappable harmony by the sedimentation of circumstance, dense and heavy as it had piled upon them.

They are, for better or worse and for everything life’s thrown at them, the same.

Dani watches, biting back a smile as the two of them jerk back, each insisting the other take the slice of bread, Flora only wrapping her fingers around it when Jamie leans back in her chair, crossing her arms tightly across her chest, eyebrows raised.

Jamie’s immediately back up after, reaching for a second piece and grabbing a third while she’s at it.

Dani laughs, and Jamie and Flora are quick to follow suit.

Their shared forbearance is a sign, Dani knows, of the larger, silent battle she’s been watching the two wage over the last couple of weeks. Any other dinner, Jamie and Flora would double down, each staking their own entitlement to the garlic bread––the value of bread, especially Dani’s, in the Taylor-Clayton household is, Dani’s learned, on par with that of sweets––glinting eyes and dogged wills locked firmly, if playfully, in a stalemate. Tonight, though… Dani glances casually over at Flora, wide-eyed and imploring, then back to Jamie, Dani’s eyes catching, dragging along the sharp jut of her jaw. Tonight, Flora is paying penance for a betrayal she’s yet to reveal, and Jamie is making a mockery of deference, all pride and petulance.

“She wants to think she’s so clever,” Jamie huffs later, climbing into bed, “let her. See if I care.”

Dani hums, climbing in beside her, tucking her legs neatly underneath Jamie’s. “You do care, though,” she smooths a hand across Jamie’s chest, placating. “You care a lot.”

Jamie puffs her cheeks out, brow furrowed.

Dani laughs. “You know she’s only doing it because she cares, too.”

“How d’you figure?”

“Well,” Dani squirms in closer to Jamie, her voice careful, deliberate, “she idolizes you, doesn’t she?”

Jamie snorts. 

“Jamie,” Dani chastises, and somehow, Jamie thinks, somehow she still feels a swoop low in her stomach at the way Dani says her name, “you’re her mom. She thinks the world of you. But she also knows how you… Feel about the whole thing, and…” 

“How I feel about the whole thing,” Jamie scoffs. 

“About boys,” Dani intones, “dating.”

Jamie stares determinedly up at the ceiling again, jaw clenching, unclenching, clenching again.

“She just doesn’t want you to judge her,” Dani’s quieter now, her voice low, soothing, “or be mad at her. She cares too much about you for that. Way more than any…” she chuckles, a soft exhale through her nose, “boy.”

“Easy for you to say,” Jamie finally says, looking sideways at Dani, the whisper of a pout on her lips, “when you always get to be the cool mum.”

Dani’s peal of laughter is bursting and bright and enough to make Jamie almost forget about Flora.

“I’m serious! Dani. Dani, I’m so serious!”

Dani only shakes her head, burying it in Jamie’s shoulder in a vain attempt to smother the giggles still wracking her body. 

Jamie rolls her eyes, even as she wraps an arm around Dani’s shoulders, pulling her closer. “I’m the one,” she says pointedly, dragging her fingers up along Dani’s shaking spine, “who sets curfew. Makes clear consequences. You’re the one,” she switches directions, and Dani shivers as Jamie’s fingers drag gracefully downwards, “who tosses her the bloody keys and stands in the doorway waving as she makes her way off to… Off to…” Jamie crinkles her nose. “What was it?”

“James,” Dani supplies readily.

“Off to James.” Jamie groans, rolling over into Dani. “James. She already has a Jamie in her life, she doesn’t need a James.”

“Mm.”

“What? You think she needs a James?”

Dani shakes her head, giggling again.

“What?”

Dani looks at her, tugging her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Dani, what?”

“You think I’m a cool mom?” Dani’s eyes are wide.

“You’re still hung up on that?”

Dani just looks back at her, expectant, eyes shining in the low light of their bedroom.

“Eh,” Jamie shrugs, “you’re alright.”

“Jamie!”

Jamie laughs–– _finally,_ Dani thinks, leaning in to nudge her nose against Jamie’s––and tugs Dani in closer. “Yeah, you’re pretty cool.”

“Pretty cool?”

“Cool enough to snag me.”

Dani rolls her eyes.

“No, baby, listen––”

“I’m listening.” Dani raises her eyebrows, waiting.

“Cool enough,” Jamie continues, “to snag me. To be down with my kid. To be down with both of us, really.”

“Yeah,” Dani murmurs, assuaged, corners of her mouth curling up, “I do put up with a lot from you specifically.”

“Makes you all the cooler.” Jamie wants to lean in, wants to close the space between them, but first: “cool enough, too, to be just as much as a mum to her as I am. More, even, sometimes.”

“Jamie…” 

“I mean it,” Jamie’s voice, despite her earlier flippancy, is serious, “you’re pretty damn cool, Miss Clayton.”

Dani flushes and, giggling again, leans in to press her lips to Jamie’s. “I think you’re a cool mom,” she whispers.

“Yeah?” Jamie whispers back, returning the kiss, her hands sliding up underneath Dani’s sleep shirt, fingers flexing lightly against her back.

“Mmhmm,” Dani slides a leg up and over Jamie’s waist, rolling on top of her, and ducks her head. “A hot mom, even.”

“How can one be simultaneously cool _and_ hot?”

“I dunno,” Dani looks up, shrugging, then ducks her head again, busying herself with the smooth column of Jamie’s neck, “but you are.” 

“You dunno? Aren’t you a teacher?”

“You,” Dani nips at the hollow of Jamie’s throat, “ask that too much.”

“It’s my”––Jamie gasps––“insatiable curiosity, that.”

Jamie can feel Dani’s grin against her skin. “Insatiable, huh?”

Jamie’s answering “uh-huh” is pitchy, abruptly cut off by the hitch of her breath as Dani’s hand slips into her sleep shorts, and then Jamie’s pressing her head back into her pillow, her eyes fluttering shut.

“You two are the same, you know,” Dani murmurs later, running her fingers through Jamie’s hair, Jamie’s head resting on her stomach, “you and Flora.” 

“Not the same,” Jamie’s eyes are closed, and it’s the most peaceful she’s looked talking about Flora in weeks, Dani muses, resolving that she should definitely, _definitely_ , try this approach more often.

“No?”

“No,” Jamie’s smile is lazy, mischievous. “I don’t like boys, do I?”

Dani laughs. “No,” she says, her free hand finding one of Jamie’s, their fingers tangling together. “No, I guess not. You’re almost the same, then, though,” she adds, voice firmer, resolute, “the two of you.”

Jamie’s quiet, waiting for Dani to continue. 

“I seem to remember,” and Jamie can hear the smile in Dani’s voice as she does, “you not telling Flora about a certain new girlfriend of yours.”

Jamie hums. “Do ya?”

“I do,” Dani squeezes Jamie’s hand, and she can see the grin spreading, despite Jamie’s best efforts, across Jamie’s face, “and I seem to remember Flora figuring it out anyway.”

“Did she?”

“She did. And,” Dani’s smiling wider now, Jamie can hear it, “I seem to remember Flora being nothing but ecstatic about it the whole time. Rumor has it,” Dani lowers her voice, conspiratorial, “she still is.”

Jamie laughs. “I think this situation is a bit different, though.”

“Is it?”

“I’m not Flora’s seventeen year-old daughter. And,” Jamie flips over, resting her chin on Dani’s sternum, grinning up at her, “this James fellow isn’t a hot teacher.”

Dani laughs, and, pulling Jamie back up, kisses her again.

* * *

“Is mum mad at me?”

Dani glances across the center console at Flora. “Why, uh… Why d’you ask that?” 

Flora looks evenly back back at her. “You know why, don’t you?”

It is, Dani swallows, most definitely _not_ a question.

“I… Do,” Dani sighs. “She’s not… Mad, Flora, she’s…” 

“Angry?” Flora quirks an eyebrow, looking uncannily like the woman at the root of her anxiety. “Furious?”

“Would you kill me if I say she’s disappointed?”

Flora laughs, letting her head fall back against the headrest. “Don’t quite have the fortitude, I think,” she stares out the window, eyes carefully tracking the cars coming and going through the intersection in front of them, toying idly with her fingers in her lap. “Mum just might, though, if you keep talking like that.”

“Well, she’s never gonna tell you how she feels,” Dani shrugs, “so someone might as well, right?”

“You’re the only one who could, I think.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing I am.”

The two of them are quiet for a moment, then––

“Look, Flora, I know… I know it’s… Scary? Wanting to… To talk to your mom about… To share something… Someone, to share someone so important to you with her, especially when she’s…” 

“Practically apoplectic on the subject?” 

“Hey, c’mon, give her some credit. I’ve seen her apoplectic. This is not that.”

Flora doesn’t respond, only crosses her arms, turning her head away from Dani to stare out the side window. 

Her jaw, Dani notes, is clenching in the same way Jamie’s does, the same way Jamie’s had last night, talking about the same thing.

“Flora,” Dani’s voice is softer now, gentler, “she just wants you to tell her, is all. She wants you to _want_ to tell her.” 

“She should act like it, then, shouldn’t she?”

“I…” Dani sighs. “She’s still… Figuring this out, Flora. This is all new to her. Being a mom to someone who’s… Dating. I mean, really,” Dani glances over at her, “dating at all. You probably know more about dating than either of us do.”

Flora laughs, Dani’s face softening into an easy smile. “I don’t know about that,” she murmurs, turning her head to look at Dani again, “you two taught me everything I need to know about… Romance. Love. Showed me what it actually looks like to _be_ in love. The whole of it.”

Dani flushes, ducking her head. “I don’t know about that.”

“I do.” For all of Flora’s stubbornness––a heaping aggregate of nature and nurture, equal parts Jamie and Dani, respectively––she wields it softly, delicately. “You taught me all the ways love can look. How it can grow, change. How it can, despite everything else to the contrary, work out in the end.”

“Flora…” 

“I mean it,” Flora angles the rest of her body towards Dani’s, earnest, “it sounds… Silly, maybe, but you did. You are. Still. You two…” Flora scratches her forehead, thoughtful. “You show me a new way love can look every day.”

Dani’s quiet, concentrating, glancing out her window as she changes lanes. “I’m glad…” she finally says, “we could. Can, I mean, do that for you. It means a lot to me too, you know.”

“Trust me,” Flora laughs, “I know.”

Dani flushes. “The thing is,” she continues, voice stumbling, embarrassed, “love… It’s a lot different than dating. You’ll find someone…” Dani bites her lip, her voice drifting, and Flora knows she’s thinking about Jamie. “You will, eventually, find someone right, someone you love, someone silly and gorgeous and…” Dani laughs, “maybe even a little bit insane, but…” Dani snaps back to Flora, back to the car. “You can’t just expect… All that. Not right out of the gate.”

“You two had it, though. I remember all your early dates, the ones with me, we all went on nature walks and to movies, and you two would––”

“Those weren’t our earliest dates, Flora,” Dani replies smoothly, eyes focused on the road in front of her, desperately avoiding Flora’s gaping response. Dani swallows. “There’s a reason,” she presses, remembering her and Jamie’s anxieties, shared and singular, exorcised over the phone after Indian food and in Jamie’s bed before pancakes, remembering, too, her stomach surging, their earliest Saturdays, spent together in tangles of sheets and sweat and little else, “I said you know more about dating than either of us.” Dani purses her lips, fingers tapping absently on the side of the steering wheel as she pulls into a parking lot. “Besides, your mom and I… We were gone from the beginning. There was never… We never needed to… It was never going to be anything else between us, I think.”

“That’s what I’m _saying_ ,” Flora sighs, and for a moment Dani thinks she sounds eight years old again, “you two know all about love because you’ve always been in it. You’ve always belonged to each other, even before you knew you did.”

Dani’s brow furrows as she shifts the car into park, and, turning the key, tugging it out of the ignition, she turns, the full weight of her watery gaze coalescing on Flora.

Flora, Dani knows, has never been a stranger to romance. She’d been enthralled with the grandiosity of love even when Dani first met her, fascinated by the swooping narratives to which it lent itself, the melodrama of its moments, the apparent infallibility and tidiness, to an eight year-old, of its endings. To Flora, love has always been a story––and Flora has always loved stories––and a puzzle, a face to figure out, to peer at through the foggy pane of circumstance and determine: unfurling flower or blanket, stretched cautiously across two laps? The anticipatory chill of an ice cream sundae or the warm comfort of breakfast? It’s a means of identification Flora has carried with her since childhood, one she’d attributed to Henry Wingrave after smiling serenely up at Jamie, up at Dani, one night in bed, and sighing happily. “Love is a bedtime story today, I think,” she’d said, and Jamie and Dani had glanced over at each other over Flora’s snug form, “with the happiest of endings.”

Flora and Jamie are the same, Dani thinks again, but different, and sometimes the two are so definitively demarcated––the quickness of their temper (same) entirely antipodal to the readiness of their forgiveness (different)––but, sometimes, the two converge, existing both because and in spite of each other. In many ways, Dani’s learned, Flora is an overcorrection of Jamie, a sweeping arc painted from the same palate, in the same colors, flipped on its axis.

Jamie, too, is a romantic.

An undeniable tenant of Jamie’s character, however, it had been neglected, long buried when she and Dani had met, and so, in its absence, Flora had cultivated an unabashed affinity for love––romantic love, courtly love, fairy tale love––enough for the both of them.

Their sameness had only emerged later, Flora’s affinity for affection matched finally by Jamie’s, a seed Dani had nurtured, knowingly and not, urging it gently through the strata, breaking through, finally, after a kiss in a carpark. It flourishes now, as it has the last nine years, in Jamie’s eyes, twinkling and tender, taking in Dani as she hunches over the coffee table, Dani’s tongue peeking out between her lips as she scours scribbled story after scribbled story, Jamie watching her over the edge of a book she’s yet to even begin reading; in the moonflowers, pressed between pages of literature and love notes alike, and Jamie’s smile, wide and unselfconscious, at every giggle that bubbles up as Dani discovers each and every one; in the way Jamie threads their fingers together every night, pressing the gentle curve of her spine into Dani she pulls Dani’s arm around her, Jamie’s whispered “I love you” a steady and constant gravity in itself. 

Jamie, really, is one of the best possible people for Flora to talk to about all this, a natural counterbalance, for all her grounded delicacy, to Flora’s airy indomitability.

Lucky for Flora, though, Dani thinks, lips pursed to the side, she also has Dani, mired happily, sturdily, in the middleness between them.

“That’s the thing, Flora,” Dani finally says, a depth to her gaze that Flora can’t quite make out, and Flora cocks her head, curious. “Your mom and I, we don’t… Belong to each other. We belong to this––this family––of course, but love… The love we have… People, I think,” Dani’s voice is lower, quieter now, “mix up love and possession.”

“They do?”

“I don’t think that should be possible,” Dani supplements quickly before continuing. “I mean… They’re opposites, really. Love and ownership.”

Flora blinks, her brow furrowing.

She’s thinking it over, Dani can tell, and finally, cautiously:

“Yeah.”

Dani watches her a moment longer, wants to make sure she understands it, really understands it, and finally nods, satisfied. 

The two of them are quiet for a moment, watching each other, cars gliding in and out of the parking lot around them.

“See?” Flora says, breaking their silence. “You know more than you think you do.”

Dani blinks. “How so?”

“Well, even if love and dating are different,” Flora shrugs a shoulder, smiling at Dani, “I think that advice was splendid.” 

Dani arches an eyebrow. “Perfectly?”

Flora doesn’t remember saying it, hasn’t for some time, but it’s a memory, silly and dumb, that Dani and Jamie have yet to relinquish, Flora humoring their teasing tenderness so that they may hold tight to a piece of the eight year-old they once knew, at least for a while longer.

Flora laughs. “Perfectly.” 

Dani beams. “I still think, though,” she reaches down to release her seatbelt, “you should talk to your mom about it. She may not… Know how to go about it, but…” Dani shrugs. “You can figure it out together. We–– We can figure it out together, the three of us. If you’d like.”

Flora’s smile is small, intimate, almost shy, and it reminds Dani so much of Jamie it hurts. “I’d like that, I think.”

“Just”––Flora straightens, tensing at the sudden steel at the margins of Dani’s voice––“be honest with us, okay? We, uh, we know when you’re not.”

Flora swallows, nods. 

Dani smiles again, wide and easy, and any tension is immediately diffused, Flora relaxing as Dani leans over to press a kiss to her forehead. 

“Now,” Dani chirps, “what do you say we go look at some rings?” 

* * *

“I talked to Flora today,” Dani proffers, nonchalant, leaning back against the kitchen counter as she watches Jamie at the sink, shoulders hunched as she scrubs at a cast iron pan. “Don’t forget to oil it when you’re done,” she adds absently, glancing down at her nails, brow furrowing as she picks at a flaking cuticle.

Jamie glances back over her shoulder at Dani, eyebrows raised. She’d look almost insulted, Dani muses idly, if not for the smile lines etched at the corners of her mouth, stretching as she surveys Dani. “You tellin’ me how to wash up?”

“No,” Dani’s eyelids flutter once, twice, and she shakes her head, “no, I’m not.”

“You sure about that?” Jamie’s grinning now, reaching out to turn off the faucet, resting the cast iron in the drying rack beside the sink, “because last I checked, you’re still banned from doing this bit.”

Dani tugs the corner of her lip between her teeth, watching as Jamie turns, takes a step closer.

“But,” Jamie tilts her head, considering, “if you’re suddenly interested in telling me what to do…”

Dani feels a wave of warmth, low in her stomach, cresting as Jamie takes another step closer, her hands coming to rest on the counter on either side of Dani.

Jamie’s leaning in, and she’s close, so close, and Dani can smell the rosewater from her shampoo, can feel the warm puff of Jamie’s breath against her lips. “We…” Dani’s voice wavers, her breath shaky as she inhales. “Jamie, we have to talk about Flora.”

Jamie sighs, and Dani can feel her deflate even as she reaches for Dani’s hands, her calloused thumbs taking their time as they map out the peaks and valleys of Dani’s knuckles. “Right,” she says, “Flora. How was it today? You two were gonna go get… Manicures, was it?” She lifts one of Dani’s hands, still wrapped in hers, and squints. “Hate to break it to you, Dani, but if you did get one, it’s looking kind of shit, isn’t it?”

Dani flushes, deep and hot, and hopes Jamie doesn’t notice. “Yeah, we… We decided… We didn’t get manicures.”

“No?” Jamie raises an eyebrow.

Dani shakes her head, Jamie’s thumb pressing lazy circles into her palm now, and feels her flush spreading. 

“What then, Miss Clayton, did you and our daughter do?”

They stare at each other for a moment, each calling the other’s bluff. 

Eventually, Dani sighs, and, glancing down, looks back up at Jamie through her lashes. “We went to tea––”

Jamie groans.

“Jamie, I know, we went to tea, and I didn’t want you to feel left out, so I didn’t want to say anything, but the point was to talk to Flora, and you know how much she loves those little sandwiches, and…”

Dani is imploring. Jamie can never resist when Dani is imploring, and Dani knows it.

“Forgive me?”

Jamie only shakes her head, eyes rueful. “Nothin’ to forgive.”

Dani relaxes, slumping back against the counter.

“But,” Jamie tugs her back up, pulling Dani’s hand to her lips, teasing, “don’t go to tea again without me, yeah? Take her to…” she shrugs. “I dunno. Owen’s, or something.”

Dani should take the concession, knows Jamie pushing back on where she and Flora had been that afternoon is the last thing she needs, but she can’t help but challenge her anyway, falling back on one of her favorite habits with the tug of a hand, pulling Jamie in closer. “She can have Owen’s any time she wants,” she murmurs, “I had to bust out the big guns.”

“You Americans and your guns,” Jamie murmurs back, eyes dipping to Dani’s lips. 

Dani ignores her, dropping Jamie’s hands, dragging hers around Jamie’s waist, and slipping them, slowly, into her back pockets. “What else would you suggest?” 

Dani squeezes.

“Dani…”

“Yeah?”

“Weren’t you the one who said we have to talk about Flora?”

There’s a whine, low, in Dani’s throat.

“Your words, not mine.” 

“We can talk about her later,” Dani pulls Jamie the rest of the way in, holding Jamie, flush, against her body, “right?”

“What time,” and Jamie’s already leaning in, “did she say she was getting home again?”

It’s a win-win, Dani thinks after, pleased with herself, leaning back against the kitchen counter behind her, legs stretched across the tiled floor, Jamie straddling her, her forehead pressed, breathing heavy, against Dani’s. Jamie’s long forgotten about where Dani and Flora had been that afternoon, and Dani’s… Well, she supposes. Stretched out across the kitchen floor with her skirt around her waist and the feeling of Jamie clenching, tight, around her fingers, of Jamie grinding frantically down onto them still fresh in her mind.

“Lap?” Dani offers, nudging her forehead against Jamie’s before letting her head fall back against the cool door of their under-counter storage.

Jamie nods, shimmying her way down Dani’s body, her head coming to rest atop Dani’s outstretched legs, and Dani’s fingers find their way, instinctively, to comb through Jamie’s hair.

“I’m noticing a pattern lately,” Jamie breathes, content, eyes lazily finding Dani’s above her.

The corners of Dani’s mouth quirk up. “Oh?”

“Mmhmm.”

Dani hums.

“Every time you’ve talked to me about Flora lately, about this,” Jamie waves a vague hand, and Dani knows immediately what she means, “you seem to insist on bedding me first.”

“No bed here,” Dani quips, voice mild, amused.

“You,” Jamie pokes at her thigh, “know what I mean.”

Dani laughs. “Maybe,” she pauses, then: “is it working?”

“Must be,” Jamie considers. “You, Miss Clayton, are very persuasive when you want to be.”

Dani smiles, blowing a kiss down to Jamie.

Jamie smiles back and reaches up, fingers tracing the swell of Dani’s cheek.

They savor the moment, basking in the afterglow, and eventually, Jamie sighs.

“Alright then,” she says. “How’d it go?”

* * *

They’re halfway through dinner––steak and mash, to both Jamie and Flora’s delight, Dani as intentional, as prepared, as ever––when Jamie clears her throat.

“Flora,” she says.

Flora’s head shoots up, her eyes wide, almost flighty. 

“Why don’t you, uh… Have you, uh… How was seeing your friends today?”

Flora’s eyes flit nervously over to Dani, then back to Jamie, uncharacteristic in her brevity. “Good.”

“And how are they all?”

Flora’s fork is hovering halfway to her mouth. “Good.”

“How is”––Dani can see Jamie’s teeth clench, watches Jamie immediately catch herself, reach for her wine glass instead––“James?”

Dani takes a heaping bite of potatoes, smiling around her fork, and her free hand drifts under the table to light along Jamie’s thigh, reassuring.

Flora lowers her fork to her plate, eyes wide, glued to Jamie’s, as if afraid to look away. “He’s good,” she says carefully. “I actually… I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

Dani watches it play out in front of her, fingers flexing against the twill of Jamie’s pants. 

She’d been scared of this, once, of Flora and Jamie’s impermeable mutualism, silent and seamless, enabling the conversations that have been playing out, no words uttered at all, between them over the last couple of weeks, enabling the one playing out now, all apologies and olive branches and effort, exhaustive and whole. 

Dani had been scared of this once and had dived in anyway, the lexicon of her personage twining with, completing, that of theirs, growing and stretching over their near decade together into something stronger, taller, something closer to entirety.

It’s how she had known what to do now, had understood the last two weeks’ of Flora’s not-saying, had understood Jamie’s elusion, willful and terrified, Flora and Jamie’s shared insistence to each wait for the other, each knowing the other would never give, interrupted finally by Dani, once again, in their kitchen.

(“One day at a time, remember?” Dani had murmured earlier, fingers threading through Jamie’s hair, the base of the counter cool against her back. “You and me, figuring it out together.”)

“Yeah?” Jamie’s voice is rough and earnest, all at once too eager for her purported antipathy, the façade of derision crumbling in the face of Flora, open and honest at last.

“Yeah,” Flora ducks her head, smiles. “James and I… We’re, uh…” she looks back up at Jamie, and Jamie’s hand finds Dani’s under the table, squeezing. “We’re dating.”

“Dating,” Jamie repeats. “So is he your…” 

“Boyfriend, yeah.” Flora flushes as she says it, biting her lip, gaze still fixed on Jamie, nervous, expectant. 

“You’ve got…” Jamie swallows, her hand tightening around Dani’s under the table, her other reaching––all three of them ignoring the slight tremor in her fingers as she does––for a piece of bread, for something, anything, to keep it occupied. “You’ve got a boyfriend.”

It feels like a dam breaking as soon as she says it, the words spilling out in a deluge, and Jamie desperately wants to catch them, to pull them back between her lips even as they rush away, flattening the landscape of their relationship, reshaping it, irrevocable.

But Jamie can’t, and so she does the second best thing instead.

She tears into the bread in her hand, focusing on chewing, on doing anything with her mouth, anything other than––

“Flora,” she turns to Dani as she chews, and says it again, doing everything she can to temper the furrow of her brow, the wildness of her eyes, “s’got a boyfriend.”

Dani holds her gaze, steady and sure, and her nod is so slight, a bob of the head reserved, affirming, exclusively for Jamie, that Flora doesn’t notice it.

Jamie had been scared of this, once, _Jamie, not Louise_ contorting, twisting itself around _now too, Flora_ and burrowing itself in deep despite Jamie’s best efforts, despite her insistence, face pressed into Dani’s shoulder, Dani’s arms around her, anchoring her, that it didn’t matter, that Flora had been the best thing to happen to Jamie, that she loved Flora for Flora’s sake and no one else’s.

Jamie had been scared of this once––still is––and is facing it head-on anyway, Dani’s hand in hers, looking the thing in the eyes. She realizes, though, as she does, that it’s something else puppeting her fear now, that Flora _is_ Flora, and that, instead, it’s the slow creep of time pulling her strings, undeniable in its approach, leisurely enough to see coming, even from a decade away, unassailable for all their foresight. 

Flora is seventeen.

Flora is seventeen, and Flora’s dating. 

Flora is seventeen, and Flora’s dating, and Flora––it hits Jamie with staggering finality––is growing up.

And when Flora grows up...

What is Jamie, without Flora?

Jamie rests there for a minute, soaking up the assurance Dani’s offering, and when she turns back to Flora, she breathes, her hand relaxing around Dani’s under the table. “Well,” she says, her voice and smile cracking, “let’s hear it then. How did it happen? Who asked who out?” Jamie narrows her eyes. “He plays guitar, yeah? Did he serenade you?”

The words are out there, Jamie figures, ferried away, and the truth has been longer still. The only choice she has left is to dive in.

* * *

Jamie, Dani thinks, is remarkably cool when James comes over for dinner the next weekend.

They know James, a regular staple of Flora’s friend group, polite and reserved with a shy smile and a paperback perpetually crammed into the back pocket of his Levi’s, have known him since he and Flora had both been thrown together in year seven. He’s been to their house plenty of times before, always with a gaggle of his and Flora’s shared friends: they’d been children, squished together on the couch in the family room, Flora situated firmly in the middle, a plate of biscuits planted proudly on her lap, grown into teenagers, spread out, stretched haphazard across the sectional or the floor, eyes darting, nervous, between each other and Tom Cruise on the television, clammy hands brushing against clammy hands in the neutral ground afforded them by a bowl of chips.

(“Crisps, Dani,” Jamie had teased, unrelenting, “and didn’t you just take them some?”

“I did,” Dani had replied, balancing the plastic pink bowl on her hip as she’d paused, glancing over at Jamie, “but they’re already gone, I think, so…”

“Christ, what’s got them eating so fast?”

Dani had only grinned mysteriously, sweeping out of the kitchen, offering Jamie a simple “puberty!” over her shoulder as she had.)

This is the first time, however, it’s just been James.

This is the first time he’s been here––as far as any of them care to acknowledge, anyway, Jamie and Dani’s trust in Flora’s account of their budding relationship implicit––as anything other than a classmate, a friend.

This is the first time he’s been here as Flora’s boyfriend.

This is the first time he’s been here as Flora’s boyfriend, and Jamie is remarkably cool with it.

She’s entirely at ease throughout dinner, Dani observes, Jamie’s smile effortless and her laughter generous, and that’s _Jamie_ , but it’s her Jamie, Flora’s Jamie. It’s a Jamie reserved for the places walls don’t matter, places where the stakes, however high, are undaunting, for drinks at Owen’s or nights at Henry’s, for leaning, smirking, in the doorway to Dani’s classroom.

It is, apparently, a Jamie for having dinner with their daughter’s first boyfriend.

Their daughter’s first boyfriend who had pressed a kiss, nervous and bumbling, to Flora’s cheek when he’d first arrived, who’d presented her with flowers––“your mum,” he had said, pride seeping into the quaver of his voice, “helped me pick them out,” and Dani’s eyes had shot over to Jamie, Jamie, who had been leaning against the kitchen doorframe, Jamie, who had been grinning, flashing him a thumbs up––right after, who was in possession of a car, and who would be driving Flora to the movies after this, the two of them glancing nervously at each other from across the center console, a whole back seat, yawning and empty, behind them.

“How are you so cool about this?” Dani asks after they leave, pacing the length of their living room restlessly back and forth, and, for the sake of their carpet, Jamie’s grateful Dani’s boots are lined up neatly alongside the door, grateful for the rule Dani had instilled the first day they’d moved in, her eyebrow raised, sharp, her pointed “no shoes in the house” sharper.

Jamie, flopped across the couch, one leg slung low, dangling off of the edge, shrugs. “How’re you not?” She watches, amused, as Dani’s arms, for all their tension, swing recklessly back and forth as she paces. 

“How am I… How am I not? _Jamie,_ ” Dani turns on her heel to face Jamie, her eyes wide, frantic, “he has a _car_.”

“So?”

“So,” Jamie watches Dani’s fists clench and unclench at her sides, doesn’t bother suppressing the grin, charmed and languid, spreading across her face, “you know what happens in cars.” 

“Do I?”

“Jamie,” Dani says her name again, and it’s low, almost chastising, Dani’s head falling to the side, her hands finding her hips, “what happens in your truck every time you drive to school for lunch?”

Jamie grins wider, her eyes sparkling. “We talk about our mornings. Listen to each other. Offer,” she winks at Dani, “stellar moral support. Honestly, Dani,” she continues, her voice lilting, “if that’s all they’re doing, then I’ll happily let them go out on a date every day. Two dates a day, even. Good for them. Good,” she says with an air of finality, “for Flora.”

Dani huffs, exasperated.

Jamie laughs. “Baby,” she holds out a hand, “c’mere.”

Dani obliges, feet shuffling along the carpet, and lets Jamie pull her down onto the couch, Dani sinking onto her knees, straddling Jamie beneath her.

Jamie reaches up, her grin softening, fingers light as they graze Dani’s pout. “What’s goin’ on in that head of yours, cool mom?”

Dani lets her head fall backwards, huffing again.

Jamie chuckles.

“I just…” Dani’s gaze is fixed on the ceiling, her hands finding Jamie’s, threading their fingers together, squeezing lightly. “It’s just so much more _real_ now, you know? It was easy, before, when… When…” 

“When it wasn’t happening right in front of us?”

Dani groans.

“Listen, Dani,” Jamie tugs at Dani’s hands and Dani rights her head, her eyes finding Jamie’s, “it was inevitable, yeah?”

Dani’s voice is barely more than a mumble. “Yeah.”

“So wouldn’t you rather it happen with us knowing? With our blessing? With us, seeing them out the door?” Dani only stares at her, sullen, and Jamie laughs. “Doesn’t give her much to rebel against that way, does it?”

“I guess not.”

“Ah, you guess not, huh?”

Dani looks down at her, pout intent.

Jamie looks back, brow furrowed, pensive.

“I know how to take your mind off it,” Jamie announces suddenly, face brightening.

She sounds, Dani thinks, almost smug.

“Taking a leaf out of your book for this one,” Jamie says, tugging at Dani’s hands again. “C’mere.”

“I’m already here.”

“You’re here, sure,” and Jamie drops Dani’s hands, reaching instead for her thighs, wrapping her hands around the backs and tugging, “but I want you _here_.”

It is, Dani finds herself thinking, Jamie pushing Dani’s skirt up and tugging her underwear to the side as Dani’s knees settle around her head, a remarkably effective approach. 

* * *

They’re in the kitchen two weeks later, and they’re panicking.

James is back, but this time he’s not alone, a flock of teenagers having descended on their house, overtaking the family room once again.

It seems normal, they reason, feels normal, even, and there’s been no evidence from Flora to suggest the contrary, except:

“Flora was down there,” Dani’s explaining, hands frenzied as she empties a bag of chips into a bowl, “stretched out across the floor, like she always is––”

“Mmhmm,” Jamie nods from her perch on the counter, reaching out to grab the empty bag from Dani, lifting it to dump the remaining crumbs into her mouth.

“––but James was on the sectional, the far side, all the way against the armrest. They weren’t even looking at each other, Jamie,” Dani opens the fridge, grabbing a fresh bottle of orange soda, “nothing.”

Jamie purses her lips. “Must’ve broken up, then. No other explanation for it.” She pauses, and Dani watches her face turn, feels hers do the same. “I’m gonna kill him. I swear to God––”

“Not if I don’t get to him–– Miles!”

Miles, making his way past the kitchen, on his way back to the family room from the bathroom, pauses. Backtracks. “Miss Clayton,” he nods, the childhood habit unshakeable despite years of protestations from Dani, “Jamie.”

“Miles.” Jamie nods, cordial. 

“Miles, can you, uh, can you come here for a second?” 

Miles glances at Dani’s hands, at her knuckles, white, around the snack bowl, and steps cautiously into the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

“You tell me. Flora and James,” Dani narrows her eyes. “What’s going on?”

Miles knows by now that when Dani’s like this, when she doesn’t have the patience for minced words or wasted time, it’s best to be as clear and direct as possible. “They broke up. Earlier tonight. But she started thinking about it a couple of weeks ago, I think.”

“A couple of weeks–– Miles, he was just at our house having dinner a couple of weeks ago.”

Miles shrugs. “Maybe a week and a half, then.”

Jamie chimes in from the counter, crossing her arms. “What did he do?”

Miles blinks. “He didn’t… He didn’t do anything. Flora broke up with him.”

“Flora––” Dani blanches.

“Flora broke up with _him_?” Miles knows Jamie well enough by now to recognize the nascent grin spreading across her face. 

“That’s right,” he nods, then pauses, hesitating. 

“What?” Dani narrows her eyes. “Miles, what?”

“It’s for the best, I think,” Miles says carefully. “He was terribly boring. Too literal for Flora, anyway.” 

Jamie snorts.

“Can I… Go back downstairs now?”

“Sure.” When Dani smiles, Miles thinks, everything else––the fear, the tension, the nerves––all seem to melt away. “Take these down with you?” She holds out the chips and the orange soda, and Miles nods, taking them happily, disappearing down the stairs. 

The door’s barely closed behind him when they burst out laughing, Dani turning to Jamie, still perched on the counter, Jamie reaching out, tugging Dani into her and burying her face in her neck, Dani laughing harder still at the tickle of Jamie’s giggles against her skin.

They’re curled up on the couch in the living room later, Flora’s friends having slowly trickled out the front door, wrapped in a blanket, Jamie tucked between Dani’s legs, Dani’s chin resting atop her head. Jamie’s holding a copy of _The Secret Garden_ , one with crayon scribbled in the margins of yellowing pages, out in front of her, and Flora watches from the stairs as they read together, Jamie only turning each page after murmuring “ready?” and receiving a warm hum of assent from Dani.

“Hey,” Flora says finally, pulling the door shut behind her, smiling at her mums as they glance up at her.

Jamie grins, opening her mouth, and Flora thinks she can see Dani’s arms tightening around her, thinks she can see Dani’s lips brush, murmuring, against Jamie’s ear, and Jamie pauses. Closes her mouth. Thinks better of it.

“Hey, munchkin,” she says instead, voice soft. 

“Before I go up to bed,” Flora wrings her hands in front of her, glancing down at the floor before she looks back up at them, “I just wanted to say thank you.”

Jamie raises her eyebrows, and Dani lifts her head from Jamie’s, tilting it, curious, to one side.

“For teaching me…” Flora’s brow furrows for a minute, and then she continues. “For teaching me never to settle. Not to jump in right away, especially if it’s not right, for the sake of it. To wait,” she says, voice stronger, more confident, “for my own silly, gorgeous, insane person.”

“Some choice words,” Jamie murmurs to Dani once Flora’s made her way upstairs, having hugged them both goodnight, “silly, gorgeous, insane.” She quirks a bemused eyebrow at Dani. “Wonder where she got those. What kind of person chooses silly, gorgeous, and insane?”

“Yeah,” Dani echoes, grin spilling across her face, and ducks her head back to Jamie’s, nestling a kiss in her hair. “What kind of person?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to carrot_garden for their patience and help when it comes to linguistics and the UK school system.
> 
> Thank you, too, to y'all for reading, and for being so down to hang out in this AU for a little while longer. I can't wait to hear your thoughts and read all your comments.
> 
> I'm hoping to update this collection once a week, but in the meantime, please feel free to continue sending along prompts, or visit me over on tumblr at marisas-coulters. I'm always down for a chat!


	2. gonna stick to you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve… Been thinking,” Dani continues, exhaling, “and I… I think… I mean, I know–– Flora, your mom is…”
> 
> Flora’s eyes are bright, expectant, her breath coming in sharp, excited exhales. “Yes?”
> 
> Dani breaks, and it comes spilling out all at once.
> 
> “I want to marry your mom, Flora”––Dani doesn’t breathe as she says it, doesn’t even register one of Flora’s hands shooting out and finding hers, clutching, tight––“I want to marry Jamie, and I’ve been thinking about it for so long, and… And I’m ready, I don’t want to wait anymore, even if we can’t technically… But I wanted to talk to you first. To… Ask you, I guess, if that’s… If it’s okay. With you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's fluff! It's all fluff. Absolutely excruciating fluff. (idk about y'all, but life has been less than great lately, so hopefully it can bring you the much-needed joy it did me.)
> 
> This one happens contemporaneously with the last one shot––s/o to those of you who picked up what I was putting down!––and comes from a prompt from TeaTimee:
>
>> _What about the conversation with Flora before one of them proposes? Which ever one is proposing sitting her down and being like 'I wanna do this but I wanted to ask you first'_

Dani’s been thinking.

Dani’s been thinking for a while. 

Dani’s been thinking for years, in fact.

Thinking, for most of her life, had never been a best practice for Dani Clatyon.

Historically, it had been ruinous, debilitating at best, nails chewed to the quick, nights spent, staring, stranded between sheets and sleeplessness, at her ceiling. She can’t remember when it had started, only that, for so long, it had been all she’d ever known, her brain wracking, frantic and forecasting, ahead at every turn, charting out conceivable consequence after conceivable consequence, each splitting off from itself over and over again, consequences of consequences propelling themselves forever forward, their branches knotted and unending and ensnaring Dani in a thicket of her own design.

Yet, Dani thinks, despite it all: it’d kept her safe.

When you’ve considered every option, she’s reasoned, every possible outcome––and the outcomes of those outcomes, and the outcomes of those outcomes––you’re prepared for anything. Nothing can hurt you, because nothing can surprise you. You have, on some level, in some flickering corner of your brain, expected it. Planned for it. Welcomed it.

No dead dads.

No malaised mothers.

Only the fulfillment of a fantasy become reality, Dani moving heedlessly, practiced, through it, pulling her course of action, carefully compartmentalized, from her mind.

Thinking, however, has since become a best practice for Dani Clayton.

It had changed, finally, one morning in Jamie and Flora’s old flat, in Jamie’s bed, Jamie bumping a gentle shoulder against Dani’s, her voice low as she’d murmured “you don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen in the future.”

It had been permission and revelation all at once, absolving Dani of a future that hadn’t yet come to pass, that may not ever come to pass, a reminder that Dani, for all her preemptive self-castigation, for all the guilt Jamie had known she was carrying around, wasn’t responsible––couldn’t be responsible––for a future still so unformed.

Most of all, though, it had been a promise: a promise that, whichever shape the future would come to take, whatever Dani’s role would be in its molding, Jamie would be there with her, the two of them shaping it, together. 

Now, Dani thinks about a lot of things.

She thinks about dinners for the week, about balancing a Thursday night dinner at Owen and Hannah’s (rich, very French), with her own (still smothered in butter, definitively less French), about planning the requisite grocery trip with Jamie, Dani’s hand lighting on their cart, her pinkie grazing Jamie’s as Jamie pushes it leisurely up and down the aisles, musing, the corner of her mouth quirking up, about how Dani, not Jamie, nor Flora, had been the one to finish their last pint of ice cream. 

She thinks about work, about graphs and grading, texts and times tables, anticipating Flora’s questions, her curiosity piqued by Dani’s scrupulous lesson planning, Flora watching, enthralled, from where she’s camped out at the kitchen table, her own textbooks all but forgotten. 

She thinks, grinning to herself, biting her lip, about the coming Saturday, a night out with Jamie, their arms pressed, comfortable, familiar, against each other’s at a wine bar, knees bumping softly together underneath the bartop, about the bow of Jamie’s lips, parted, laughing as Dani regales her with the latest dispatches from her classroom. She thinks about Jamie’s thighs, shaking, clenching around her own head later that night, about the way Jamie’s breath hitches above her, her fingers desperately seeking out Dani’s, pressing into her hip, Jamie tangling their fingers together.

She thinks about reminding Jamie––again––to uncuff her jeans before tossing them into the hamper. (“Don’t see why,” Jamie grins mischievously at her every time, “when you’re just gonna do it for me, anyway.”)

She thinks about Flora’s friends, about the swarm of teenagers descending on their house every weekend, wondering idly what, if anything, is going on between Flora and James, settling closer and closer to each other on the sectional each week, and when, if ever, Jamie is going to acknowledge that she’s seen it too.

She thinks about waking up to Jamie in the mornings, about Jamie rolling into her, nuzzling her face, sleepy and sated, into Dani, about Jamie pressing soft kisses to her neck, the feeling of Jamie’s murmured “g’morning” warm against her skin.

She thinks about waking up to Jamie every morning, forever.

* * *

“Hey Flora?”

They’re in Dani’s classroom, Flora’s homework spread across Dani’s desk and Flora’s legs tucked neatly underneath her in Dani’s chair, peering at a reading on language acquisition while Dani, sprawled in the reading nook across the room, sorts through her classroom library. 

Flora doesn’t respond, only squints, instead, at the papers in front of her.

“Flora?”

It’s a tradition for the two of them now, longstanding, having started with Flora’s transition to secondary school: at least once a week––up to three times, come exam season––Flora makes her way to Dani’s classroom after school, camping out at Dani’s desk, immersing herself in her homework while Dani dives headfirst into classroom maintenance, happy to lose herself in seasonal decor and seating arrangements. (On rare occasions, even Jamie will make an appearance, stopping by on her way home to drop off a snack, popping her head into the classroom and asking, teasing, “oi, sprout, what’re you doing here? Who still talks to their year four teacher when they’re seventeen?”)

Flora glances up, startled. “What? Oh,” her smile is slow, sheepish, “I’m sorry.”

Dani laughs, which isn’t, Flora considers, particularly out of character for her, except:

“That’s, uh, that’s okay. What’re you… What’re ya reading?”

Flora hasn’t heard her mother stumble over her words like this in… Years, really, she thinks, her thoughts meandering back through the haze of childhood memory. She tilts her head, taking in Dani’s face, the flush rising to her cheeks, the way Dani’s eyes dart around the classroom before finding their way back to Flora, and sets her pencil down carefully. “Something for English Language,” Flora says breezily, folding her hands in front of her. “You?”

Dani blinks, thrown, and glances down at the book in her hands, laughing, nervous. “ _The_ , uh, _Wind in the Willows_.” 

“That’s a good one,” Flora muses, eyes slipping from Dani’s face down to the book in her hands and back again. “But…” she tilts her head the other way, curious, “what’re you thinking?”

Dani blanches, glancing down before her eyes find Flora’s again. Flora, Dani’s learned, is inclined, like Jamie, towards bluntness, but in Flora its edges are softened, an inquiry rather than an accusation, however benign it may or may not be.

“I, uh…” Dani pauses, and, pursing her lips, climbs to her feet, making her way towards Flora to perch on the edge of her desk. “I wanted to… Talk to you. About something. About your mom. To talk to you about your mom.”

Flora presses her lips together, focusing, intent, on maintaining a neutral face, her efforts belied by the wring of her hands on the desk in front of her. 

“I’ve… Been thinking,” Dani continues, exhaling, “and I… I think… I mean, I know–– Flora, your mom is…”

Flora’s eyes are bright, expectant, her breath coming in sharp, excited exhales. “Yes?”

Dani breaks, and it comes spilling out all at once.

“I want to marry your mom, Flora”––Dani doesn’t breathe as she says it, doesn’t even register one of Flora’s hands shooting out and finding hers, clutching, tight––“I want to marry Jamie, and I’ve been thinking about it for so long, and… And I’m ready, I don’t want to wait anymore, even if we can’t technically… But I wanted to talk to you first. To… Ask you, I guess, if that’s… If it’s okay. With you.” 

Dani’s eyes are wide and pleading, but confident, too, a confidence Flora trusts implicitly, would stake even the most outlandish of bets on.

And this, Flora knows, this is the farthest thing from outlandish. It’s not even a bet.

It is, unequivocally, an absolute.

“I want you to marry my mum too,” she breathes. “I’ve wanted it since I was eight years old, in fact.”

“Yeah?”

Flora’s up and out of Dani’s chair before either of them realize it, has made her way around Dani’s desk and wrapped her arms around Dani by the time she’s responding. “Yeah,” she sighs, burying her face in Dani’s neck, “I’ve been waiting for so long.”

“Me too, Flora,” Dani whispers, her voice catching, hugging Flora back, “me too.”

It’s impossible, they decide, to get any work done after that, Dani’s classroom library and Flora’s readings easily abandoned as the two of them dissolve into furtive giggles, beaming at each other from across the room.

“You’re going to marry mum,” Flora whispers, delighted, as they make their way out of the school building, Dani taking care to lock up as they go.

“I am,” Dani bites her lip, her giddiness spilling over into a grin, digging in her pocket for her keys, passing them to Flora, “I’m going to marry Jamie Taylor.”

She pauses then, watching Flora unlock the car and slip into the driver’s seat.

“You really…” Dani slides into the passenger seat, tugging the door closed behind her and pulling her seatbelt across her chest. “You really thought about me marrying your mom when you were eight?”

Flora laughs, shrugging as she turns the keys in the ignition. “I may have mentioned it to Miles once or twice,” she methodically checks her side mirrors, rearview mirror, then backs out of the parking space, glancing slyly over at Dani. “I’m not entirely sure you could blame me, though.”

“No?”

Flora chuckles, turning out of the parking lot. “No, not with the way you two looked at each other. The way you two would make each other smile. Especially not with the way,” she grins, flicking on her turn signal, “I caught you two sharing a blanket on the bus ride home one night.”

Dani groans, her head falling back against the headrest behind her. “Nine years,” she says, “nine years, and you’re still not going to let us live that down. We weren’t sharing it, by the way, either,” she adds, stubborn, protesting, “there were two blankets, and––”

“I just think it’s funny,” Flora says mildly, “that you two thought you weren’t doing anything. That you thought, really thought, you were doing a good job at… Whatever it is you were or weren’t doing.”

Flora isn’t expecting Dani to grin in response, isn’t expecting the set of Dani’s jaw, easy and obstinate in the glare of the passing headlights.

“I think it’s funny,” Dani says, nonchalant, “that it seems to run in the family.”

“What?” 

“I think it’s funny,” Dani repeats, “two hands, Flora”––Flora tugs her hand, teeth suddenly tugging worriedly at her thumbnail, away from her mouth, wrapping it back around the steering wheel––“thank you. I think it’s funny that it seems to run in the family, your mom and I…” Dani waves a vague hand, “all those years ago, and, you, now.”

“What do you mean?” Dani watches Flora’s hands tighten around the steering wheel.

Dani only grins wider, shrugging mysteriously. “You tell me.”

Flora’s quiet, her brow furrowing, eyes focused on the road ahead.

For all their wont to chat, Dani thinks to herself, getting the Taylor women to talk––actually _talk_ ––can feel insurmountable at times. For the longest time, she’d thought it was just Jamie, Dani well used to Flora’s happy chatter, to her goings on about anything, anytime, but just as Jamie had fallen into a habit of opening herself up, relaxing, finally, into the idea of unfurling her feelings, unabridged if apprehensive, Flora had fallen out of hers.

(Somehow, even when it had finally happened, four years after finding footing as a family, even with an entire college degree’s worth of coursework in human development, even as “Taylor” had shifted, informally and concretely, into “Taylor-Clayton,” Jamie grinning over at Dani with a “someone once told me it’s a best practice to save the best for last,” Dani had never considered what it would be like to raise a teenager. Had never considered that she, so used to dollhouses and dinners spent, Flora taking her dinner in her room, “preparing,” waiting for story time, actually would.)

“When you’re ready,” Dani adds, voice quieter this time. “You tell me when you’re ready.”

Flora only nods, fingers relaxing around the steering wheel as she rolls to a stop, glancing right, left, right again. “Thank you,” she says finally, quietly, as she pulls forward, turning onto their street.

Dani hums.

“Speaking of ready,” Flora finally says, glancing over at Dani, and Dani’s relieved to see a small smile crossing her lips, “I am glad one of you is finally doing it. Proposing.”

“Finally?” It’s a little louder, a little squeakier than Dani would like, short voweled and stunned.

Flora pulls into their driveway, easing the car into park, and, grinning, turns to face Dani. “Finally,” she says again, her voice smug.

“One of us?” Dani’s voice, in spite of herself, wavers.

Flora rolls her eyes. “You must know you’ve both been thinking about it. Maybe not as long as an eight year-old prone to daydreaming at all hours of the day, but… Mum, come on.” Flora leans her cheek back against the headrest, pulling her knees to her chest, curling into herself on the seat. “You’ve been together… What, nine years now? You have a house together, a shared bank account, and,” she beams, tossing her braid back behind her shoulder, “the charming, precocious daughter you’re raising together is growing into a well-rounded young woman––”

“So humble, too,” Dani murmurs, her eyebrows raised pointedly at Flora.

Flora laughs. “I’m only suggesting that, as in sync as the two of you two are, you must know she’s been thinking about it at least as long as you have.”

“I don’t…” Dani can feel the flush dusting the tips of her ears, feels it start to spread down the back of her neck. “I don’t know about that.”

“Maybe not as… Explicitly as you were,” Flora shrugs, “not at first, but…” she purses her lips, choosing her words carefully. “Don’t you think,” she finally says, voice even, sure, “she must have, on some level, been thinking it? To have let you in at all?”

Dani listens, pursing her lips.

“She doesn’t do anything without a reason, mum,” Flora continues, “especially not when it comes to me. Us. She wouldn’t just…” she scratches her forehead, “well, she wouldn’t just let anyone into our lives if she didn’t plan on them staying, would she?”

Dani’s quiet, watching Flora, Flora looking back calmly, patiently, when the light on their front porch blinks once, twice. 

Dani jumps and Flora laughs, the easy silence broken between them, the two of them turning to glance at the front door. 

Jamie’s leaning against the doorframe, brows raised, and when she sees them looking, calls out, “you two coming in? Or are you planning on holing up out there tonight?”

Dani feels the corners of her mouth curling up as she shakes her head, turning to glance at Flora one last time. “We,” she says warmly, reaching over to tuck a stray strand of hair back behind Flora’s ear, “never seem to give you enough credit, do we?”

Flora grins. “I certainly wouldn’t refuse a bit more.”

Dani laughs, reaching for the car door handle, then pauses. “Not a word to your mom, okay?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Flora promises. “Now,” she adds, smiling sweetly, “can we go inside? I’m starving.”

“And here I was hoping you’d spend the night out there,” Jamie says as Dani makes her way to the front door, still grinning when Dani slips past her, Flora already inside and well on her way to the kitchen, “thinking I’d have the bed all to myself.”

“You wouldn’t want the bed all to yourself,” Dani murmurs, toeing off her boots as Jamie locks the front door behind them, “you’d miss me too much.”

Jamie hums, sliding her arms around Dani’s waist, pulling Dani flush against her. “You got me there,” she murmurs back, leaning in to press her lips to Dani’s. “How was your day? You finish that pesky library project of yours?”

“Not quite,” Dani leans back in for a second kiss, longer this time, and Jamie’s sighing contentedly into her mouth when Dani pulls away, distracted, her hands coming to rest against Jamie’s chest. “Why did you decide to do this?”

“Decide to kiss you?”

“No, decide to do…” Dani waves a hand around them, “this. All this. Us.”

Jamie’s brow furrows, but she humors Dani, her hands slipping down and into the back pockets of her jeans. “Well,” she shrugs a shoulder, “I liked ya. Still do, by the way. And I wanted to. Had for a while. And after a first kiss like the one we had…” Jamie exhales, her eyes glinting. “Could you blame me?”

Jamie can tell Dani isn’t wholly satisfied with her answer, Dani’s brows pinching together, her eyes searching Jamie’s face.

“What?”

“Why else?”

“What do you mean, ‘why else?’”

“Why else did you do it? I know how you used to feel… About Flora, letting people in. You wouldn’t risk it just because you had a crush.”

“I think,” Jamie says, slowly, deliberately, squeezing softly, “you and I both know it was more than just a crush, but”––Dani clicks her tongue impatiently, but leans back into Jamie’s touch, eyelids fluttering––“I do follow.” She bites the inside of her cheek, thinking. “I didn’t realize it right away, but… I liked you, Dani, so much. And I knew Flora liked you too, and Flora… Needed someone like you. Needed _you_. And I…” Jamie swallows, eyes finding Dani’s, holding them, “I needed you too. For all of it. I mean,” she laughs, low and hoarse, “who else would have the patience to teach the two of us Monopoly and still have the energy for a bedtime story after?”

Dani laughs, nuzzling in closer to Jamie, her arms sliding up and around Jamie’s neck. “Can’t be many people, can it?”

“No,” Jamie whispers, broad smile breaking across her face, “just you, I think.”

“Lucky me,” Dani whispers back, and then she’s closing the distance between them, pressing their lips together, beaming into their kiss.

* * *

Jamie Taylor has never been one for marriage. 

For most of her life, her only relationship with the thing, fraught and fruitless despite the very obvious evidence to the contrary, had been that she herself had been a product of her parents’, for all the good, she thinks bitterly, that had done any of them. All she’d known of marriage had been a roiling of contradictions: the simultaneity of presence and absence, her father a steady presence from six hundred meters away, her mother inconstant, a vagrant in her own home.

In the end, she hadn’t even been that, and when she’d left, Louise hadn’t even bothered to dissolve her marriage, the starved specter of her union with Dennis all at once enduring and faded, finally, beyond opacity. 

It had been an easy enough thing to forget about after that.

Besides, marriage, Jamie had been adamant, was about the state first and love second, and neither had ever served her, not as a child, ripped away from the only semblance of family––however haunted––she’d ever known, and not as an adult (barely, she tells herself, if that), left alone save for Flora, screaming, all too familiar, in her arms.

Flora, Jamie had decided then, was the only other person she’d ever need, and Flora wasn’t going anywhere.

It was that forbearance, Jamie knew, that refusal of reliance, self-inflicted and taught, time after tedious time, on another person that would keep them together. That would keep them safe.

Marriage has never been one for Jamie Taylor, either.

Women, the law is adamant, can’t marry other women. It’s something of which Jamie’s always been keenly aware, the writ of the state dictating the lengths to which her love––assumptive and implausible as it may have been––could reach, its prohibitions on her personhood straightforward and stunting, even as she she had actively disavowed the notion.

It makes it easier, Jamie had always thought, not to want something when you are, by definition, so excluded from it in the first place. Saved her the trouble, really. Saved her the sadness, pushed down and condensed, coalifying into anger and resentment and so much grief. Saved her the feeling.

And then she’d met Dani Clayton.

And Jamie, finally, had let herself want.

She had given it voice after a kiss in a carpark, her wanting––to take Dani’s lips in hers; to wrap Dani’s hand in her own; to stay up all night in a tangle of limbs, histories too long unspoken whispered across a shared pillow––welcomed, matched, even, by Dani, met with a whispered admission of “I feel like I want and I want and I want so much.”

It had felt like forgiveness, Jamie had thought then, for wanting at all despite Flora, despite the pledge, persisting for so long, she’d made to her, an admission to match her own, assuring her that eschewing selflessness wasn’t selfishness, wasn’t sacrificing Flora to a caprice. It had felt like forgiveness, too, for abstaining from wanting for so long, compassion and companionship offered all at once, all recognition and resonance and Dani.

Dani.

Dani, most of all, and a promise, inherent, to be there. To stay. 

Now, Jamie wants a lot of things.

She wants to remodel their kitchen––however shite her cooking may be––to let in more natural light, to put in bay windows overlooking their backyard, overlooking the adjacent garden there, all tomatoes and herbs and pepper plants. She wants a new refrigerator, bigger, double-doored, with room enough for Flora’s finals (Jamie can hear her protested “mum, really, I’m seventeen now, you don’t need to keep hanging my assignments,” can hear the preen in her voice nonetheless) and postcards from Paris, Hannah and Owen sending along biweekly check-ins, regaling them with bulletins from A Batter Place. She wants a new kitchen island, too, with a marble top and space enough for a flurry of flora with room to spare, whether it be for the Kitchenaid stand mixer waiting, hidden in a corner of their closet underneath a pile of Jamie’s shoes, for Dani’s birthday, or for Dani herself, biting her lip and easing herself back and up onto the countertop, Jamie’s lips quick to follow.

She wants the Lloyd deal, a new landscaping project for Viola Lloyd’s latest real estate acquisition, Viola gleefully dangling it in front of Jamie, forcing her to submit a formal proposal, despite having worked with her for years now, and despite having, begrudgingly, loved every contract Jamie’s filled for her, from filling, once and for all, the overgrown pond on her family estate to Jamie’s annual maintenance, pained and precise, of Viola’s rose garden.

She wants a vacation, a proper vacation, to somewhere sweltering and sunny and utterly secluded, her only company Flora and Dani and a drink in her hand, Dani’s foot looped around her ankle as they recline, beach chairs pushed tightly together, Jamie and Flora laughing as Dani cakes sunscreen down her nose and around her eyes. She wants to run, splashing, into the surf, springing up onto Dani’s back when Dani least expects it, Flora squealing, avoiding the spray in a search for seashells, steadfast and determined. She wants their own bungalow, Flora doors down, so that she can kiss Dani, slow and sure, can drag her down to the floor as soon as they’re inside, can peel off her swimsuit in the shower and push her into the mattress later.

She wants Dani to never stop trying to make tea, charmed and endlessly enamored by her attempts, even if she’ll deny it every time. (Dani, a part of her admits, knows, has long known, because Dani, much to Jamie’s chagrin, always does.)

She wants Flora to stay a kid, if only for a little while longer, even as she continues to grow, even as she has to duck down to hug both Dani and Jamie now, even as Flora’s traded story time for studying, even as Jamie grumbles, Dani's lips, laughing, against her throat, about Flora's first boyfriend.

She wants to fall asleep to Dani at night, Dani’s lips gentle against hers, her murmured “I love you” thick with sleep and her snores, quick to follow, soft against Jamie’s hair, Dani’s arm slung, low and certain, around her waist.

She wants to fall asleep to Dani every night, forever.

* * *

“Thanks for coming,” Dani glances over at Flora, biting back a grin as they make their way towards the jewelry shop.

It’s futile effort, Dani’s face cracking, beaming widely the second Flora grins back at her, bumping her elbow against Dani’s. “I wouldn’t dream of missing it,” she offers back, conspiring, “couldn’t, really. I probably would have invited myself, to be honest, if you hadn’t.” 

Dani laughs. “I wouldn’t dream of doing it without you. You’re… Well, you’re just as much a part of this as I am. Besides,” she adds quickly, corner of her mouth quirking up, “you’ve known your mom’s taste longer than I have.”

Flora scoffs, and when Dani looks back over at her, she’s met by the raise of Flora’s eyebrows. “You know what mum likes.” Flora’s voice is quiet, fixed and penetrating, Dani feeling it more than she hears it.

She pauses, her hand on the door, and looks over at Flora. “I love you, you know.”

Flora only smiles, small, private, back. “I love you too, mum.”

They stay there, just for a moment, and then Dani’s pulling open the door, the two of them stepping inside. 

“When did you know?” Flora murmurs, the two of them peering into a case, her voice low.

“Know?” Dani’s fingers dust along the edge of the glass, peering down at row after row of rings, glimmering silver in the fluorescent light.

“That you were ready,” Flora glances around them, looking back to Dani, “to propose to mum. I know,” she says, eyes sparkling, “you’ve been thinking about it for a while, we talked about that bit, but…” She cocks her head, curious. “Why now?”

“I think…” Dani pauses, her hand hovering over a case, a crease etched lightly between her brows. “I was just tired of waiting,” she says finally, breezy and matter-of-fact and a little bit in awe. “I was tired of waiting,” she says it again, turning, looking at Flora, and Flora thinks she sounds almost surprised, though at what, Flora’s not entirely sure. “It’s… Like you said,” Dani’s brows furrow, puzzling it out as she goes, “we have… A house, a bank account, nine years together. We have… So many more things you can’t just… Quantify like that. We have you,” she adds pointedly, elbowing Flora gently, “and… Why should we wait? What’re we waiting for?”

Dani peers at Flora, and it feels like she’s looking for something, expecting a response that Flora’s not sure she knows to give.

“It shouldn’t take…” Dani purses her lips, looking absently around the store, her gaze landing, unfocused, somewhere in the middle distance, between the glass door and the world outside. She shakes her head. “It shouldn’t take the law, or some… Not when we already have something good. Not when we already have… The whole of it. Jamie and I have a life together, Flora. Why shouldn’t that be reason enough? Why should we wait around, wasting however much time we have? We already…” Dani’s eyes find Flora’s again, snapping back to the present, and they’re clearer, Flora thinks, than she’s ever seen them. “We already have it, don’t we? So why not… Really have it? Once and for all,” she swallows, nods, “together.”

“Together,” Flora murmurs, considering, and then she chuckles. “It’s funny.”

“Mm?”

“I feel like I could ask mum the same question and I’d just get a shrug, maybe a grin, and a ‘didn’t want to wait anymore,’” Flora smiles broadly, “and she’d stop there. But she’d mean the same thing, really, wouldn’t she?”

Dani matches Flora’s smile. “She would, I think. Might give you one of these, too,” Dani waggles her eyebrows, and Flora laughs.

“Definitely one of those.”

They resume their browsing, and Dani, squinting down through case after case, is starting to wonder if she really does have any idea whatsoever about what Jamie would like, would want, when she feels Flora tense next to her.

She looks over, but Flora’s eyes are fixed on a salesperson, all red lipstick and gold hoops, crossing over to them. Dani blinks.

“I remember you!” The salesperson comes to a stop just in front of Flora, manicured nails, scarlet and immaculate, coming to rest, tapping, on the case between them.

“I’m sorry?” 

“I remember you,” she says again, her broad smile all teeth, “you were in here just the other day, with––”

“No,” Flora’s interjection is quick, her shake of her head firm, “no, I’m afraid you must be mistaken.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’ve never…” Flora glances sideways at Dani, her eyes wide, panicked, “I’ve never been in here before.”

“No?”

“No, ma’am.” Flora offers a smile of her own, wide and apologetic.

The woman appraises her for a moment, then shrugs, laughing. “You must have a twin running around, then. Is there anything I can help you with, at least?”

“No, thank you,” Flora shakes her head politely.

“We’ll be sure to let you know,” Dani chimes in, smiling, “if we see anything we like.”

The woman nods, drifting away, and Flora busies herself with the case in front of them, looking down, concentrating, at a collection of diamond rings, splayed out across dark velvet.

She can feel Dani’s eyes on her, Dani’s gaze careful, contemplative, can make out a tight-lipped “hmm” as Dani sweeps past her, making her way to a case at the far end of the store. 

Flora lets out a slow breath as she watches Dani lean over a counter, Dani’s fingers wrapping around the strap of her purse, slung, low, across her torso.

Dani blinks.

Her fingers go slack.

She glances up, back towards Flora, and––

Flora can’t believe it. 

“What do you think?” Dani whispers when Flora’s made her way over to Dani.

“It… It’s lovely,” Flora’s eyes flit from the ring in the case up to Dani, wide-eyed and earnest, and around the shop. “You found this on your own?”

“Yeah,” Dani’s attention floats back to the display case, to the ring in front of them. “I, uh… I read about these,” Dani says, “when I started researching rings. The hands, those are friendship, and the heart, that’s love, and the crown…”

“Loyalty,” Flora breathes.

“Yeah,” Dani echoes, distracted, “loyalty. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Jamie is…” Dani glances over at Flora, then back down at the ring in front of her. “She’s my best friend. And the love of my life. And it’s like I was saying earlier, however much time we have, I’m going to spend it with her.” She nods to herself, punctuating the words as she says them. “Friendship, love, and loyalty. And it’s… It’s not flashy, or gauche, and there’s nothing to… To catch, or get knocked loose while she’s working, and gold… It’s just so classic, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Flora says, and then: “it’s perfect.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

Dani laughs. “If it has the Flora Taylor seal of approval, then…” She glances around, waves the salesperson over.

“It doesn’t just have that,” Flora murmurs, distracted, tensing as the salesperson makes her way over to them, “it has the Flora Taylor-Clayton seal of approval.”

Dani beams at her before turning to the salesperson, and Flora braces herself for the worst as Dani points out the ring, requests it in Jamie’s size, but all she gets is a befuddled smile as the salesperson slides the small, velvet box into a bag, passing it over to Dani.

“It’s funny,” the woman says, her eyes lingering on Flora, “I sold one just like this the other day.” 

Dani watches Flora’s jaw clench and unclench, hears the underlying tightness in her voice as she bids the salesperson a good day, and thinks, the two of them leaving the store, crossing back to the car, that eventually she’ll have to talk to Jamie not only about the fact that she'll have to accept, eventually, that Flora’s dating one of her friends, but also that, as has become increasingly clear over the last half hour, Flora, for all her whims, has been ring shopping with him.

It’s a problem for another time, though, Dani decides, and stays her thoughts, focusing, instead, on the moment at hand: the bag clutched, firm, in her grasp; the weight, so little for so much, of the box resting there; and Flora’s grin, full and elated, as it meets hers from across the car.

* * *

Dinner, Dani thinks, could be off to a better start. 

It could be off to any start at all, really.

Flora’s got the biggest job that night, has assured Dani that it’s all going to be perfect––“perfectly splendid,” she’d grinned, a (moderately successful) attempt at assuaging Dani’s nerves––and all Dani has to do, she’d told herself in the mirror before dinner, fingers combing nervously through her bangs, was ask the question. Four words, she thinks, four easy words, all pomp and circumstance left to Flora.

Flora, who’d pitched the idea, eyes gleaming, scheming, to Dani, three weeks ago in the car ride home from the jewelry shop.

Flora, who’s been grinning, eyes bright, jaw proud and a little smug, since she’d gotten home from the library earlier that afternoon. (“Was it awkward,” Dani had asked, greeting Flora at the front door, wandering, allowing herself the dalliance of a detour, if only to distract from her own nerves, “being around James? Since the breakup?” “No,” Flora had only smiled, “we’re still friends, mum.”)

Flora, who’s perched on the kitchen counter, legs swinging, bumping softly against the counter beneath her, looking back and forth between Dani and Jamie, amusement streaked across her face.

“I,” Dani says, mulish, “asked you first.”

“Maybe so,” Jamie shrugs, “but I asked you last.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Jamie.”

“Doesn’t it?”

Dani stares at her, Jamie meeting her eyes, holding them, corners of her lips starting to curl.

She is, Jamie knows, undoubtedly, going to be in trouble later.

She’s used to pushing Dani’s buttons, used to Dani pushing hers back tenfold, Dani feigning innocence every time, her smile guiltless, her eyes meeting Jamie’s plainly, big and wide and blue.

It’s a risk, though, when Dani gets like this, teetering on the edge of relentlessness and rigidity, teeth grinding and fists clenched, clinging to control wherever she can find it.

Usually Jamie would let it go, would cede to Dani’s stubbornness, but tonight… 

There’s something else, too, and Jamie knows it. Knows Dani knows she knows it. Knows that Dani knows that Jamie can tell that, for all of Dani’s abrupt apprehension, there’s a sense of happy anticipation there too, of excitement, of standing on the edge of an unfathomable depth, ready, waiting, to jump in.

And so Jamie pushes.

“Seriously, Dani, I don’t care what we eat for dinner. I asked you what you want for a reason, yeah?”

Dani’s eyebrows scrunch inward, furrowing, and she huffs.

Jamie laughs. “C’mere,” she takes a step inward, her arms slipping out and around Dani’s waist, pulling her closer, “I want what you want. Anything. Even your…” Jamie crinkles her nose. “Even your meatloaf, if that’s what you decide.”

“I’m not making my meatloaf,” Dani mumbles, leaning into Jamie despite herself.

“Thank Christ,” Jamie exhales, reaching up to brush Dani’s bangs to the side, Dani’s brow furrowing even more, and Flora lets out a breath likewise, relieved, behind them.

“I just…” Dani relaxes, looking up at Jamie from under her lashes, “I just want to have something you want. You deserve a night that’s about you.”

“Maybe I think you deserve one.”

“Maybe it’s what we both deserve.”

Jamie quirks an eyebrow. “Maybe it is.”

Flora’s antsy on the counter, fingers pressing into the countertop, letting her heel bang, a soft, thick sound, against the cupboard underneath her.

“Which is why,” Dani declares craftily, “you should choose.”

“What? Why am I choosing if we both deserve it?”

“Because I said you deserved it first. I’ll choose next time.”

“But I,” Jamie presses, her fingers flexing into Dani’s lower back, “said you deserved it last.”

“Maybe,” Flora chimes in, slipping down from the counter behind them, “you meet in the middle. Have something you both like. That or,” and Flora’s learned from the best, Jamie thinks, her smile, performative and benign, looking so like Dani’s in that moment, “I’ll choose for you. Something _I_ like instead.”

Jamie feigns a groan, drawn out and exaggerated. “I dunno if I can do an ice cream sundae for dinner, Flora. Getting too old for that, I reckon.” 

She’s promptly ignored, Flora raising her eyebrows, chastising, looking at them both.

They look up at her, Dani’s eyes pleading, Jamie’s cool, narrowed.

“Alright,” Flora takes a breath, surveying the two of them, and smiles.

She pauses, hesitating, looking from Jamie’s face to Dani’s.

“Pizza it is, then,” Flora says finally, and sweeps over to the counter, grabbing for the phone.

Jamie barks out a laugh, throwing her head back as Flora, pleased with herself, starts to dial.

“Pizza?” Dani follows her, close on her heels. “Flora are you…” She glances back at Jamie, still laughing, then at Flora. “Flora, are you sure?”

“Mmhmm,” Flora nods, smiling, serene, and pulls the phone away from her ear to cover the mouthpiece as she turns to Dani. “Would you like any toppings?”

It’s only later, once their dinner has arrived, that Dani catches on.

“Don’t you think it’d be fun,” Flora toes the door shut behind her, locking it, pizza box clutched in one hand, “if we had a picnic? Like we used to?”

When Flora had been younger, their Sunday nights had been spent, on occasion, holding indoor picnics, Dani spreading a careful blanket across the living room floor, Jamie balancing three plates between two hands as she ferried them in from the kitchen, Flora giggling, delighted, at the change of scenery and spurred, inspired, oftentimes, into story time at the conclusion of their meal.

Dani’s “that sounds lovely, Flora” and Jamie’s “okay, yeah” overlap, and then they’re springing into action, Dani making for the closet, tugging an oversized gingham blanket down from a shelf while Jamie cuts to the kitchen, the clatter of plates quick to follow.

Flora watches, eyes bright, biting back an even wider smile, pizza box held firm in her hands.

“You know,” she says later, reclining, two slices under her belt and eying a third, “what this reminds me of?”

Jamie’s head is quick to jerk up, her pizza forgotten, Dani’s “what?” louder than she’d like.

“Story time,” Flora grins.

“Oh?” Dani raises an eyebrow, glances over at Jamie.

“Story time, eh?” Jamie’s trying in vain to bite back a grin, keeping her eyes trained, determined, on Flora.

Flora looks at them both, from Dani to Jamie and back again, grinning wider now, and stands up. “Yes,” she says, “story time.”

She disappears into the kitchen, Dani and Jamie glancing over at each other, and Dani’s giggling, Jamie wearing an easy smile, her hand sliding across the blanket to Dani’s, threading their fingers together. “Haven’t had story time in a long time,” she murmurs.

“No,” Dani beams over at Jamie, “we haven’t.”

Flora reemerges from the kitchen with a bottle of red wine and a wine opener, dropping both with the two of them before heading to the stairs. “Please,” she tosses back over her shoulder, mischievous, “help yourselves. The show will begin shortly.”

Dani laughs as Jamie busies herself with the wine opener, the cork coming free with a gentle pop, and proffers the bottle to Dani. “After you, m’lady.”

Dani gives her a look, all tender eyes and flushed cheeks and secretive smile, reaching for the bottle. “You,” she takes a swig, swallows, passes the bottle back to Jamie, “seem awful excited for someone who’s never really liked story time.”

“I,” Jamie boasts, taking a drink herself, “am a sucker for nostalgia. Why d’you think Flora’s year four report card has lived on the fridge all these years?” Dani narrows her eyes, playful, but Jamie’s changing the subject before she has a chance to question it further. “When,” she passes the bottle back to Dani, chuckling, “d’you think the last time we drank wine straight out of the bottle was?”

Dani laughs, accepting it gratefully. “Whenever it was, we were probably closer to Flora’s age now than our own at this point.”

“Jesus, Dani, you really know what to say to a woman.”

“Oh, stop,” Dani leans in, nuzzling her nose against Jamie’s cheek. “You love what I have to say.”

“Do I?”

“Mmhmm,” Dani drops a kiss on Jamie’s cheek, two more along her jaw, brushes her lips against the shell of her ear, “and I’ll say lots more later.”

Jamie groans lowly. “That a promise?”

They’re forced apart by the sudden clearing of a throat, Dani pulling quickly back to find Flora at the top of the stairs, headband bearing once-oversized cat ears nestled cozily in her hair, eyeliner whiskers splayed out across her cheeks, drawn with a hand much steadier, Dani thinks, than hers would be. 

It’s a sight, seeing Flora dressed up for story time at seventeen, grown and lithe and a little bit gangly, poised at the top of the stairs, taller, for the first time, than the banister next to her. It makes Dani’s heart hurt a little bit––makes it burst with pride and clench with melancholy in infeasible harmony––and Dani wonders how Jamie feels, chances a glance over at her.

Dani’s not sure what she’s expecting when she looks at Jamie, and she can understand her misty eyes, can understand her lips, curling into a soft smile, but there’s a nervousness there, something Dani can’t quite penetrate, that she doesn’t expect. 

Dani wants to lean in, to look closer, but then Jamie’s ducking her head, taking a breath, and Flora’s clearing her throat, and Dani, her stomach surging, brings the bottle back up to her lips, drinking deeply.

“Welcome,” Flora says, eyes sparkling, “to story time.” 

Dani, balancing the wine between her legs, applauds.

Jamie, her eyes heavy on Dani next to her, tugs the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Perhaps you remember me,” Flora begins, her voice lilting, “from long, long ago. I’m a cat named Tales, with a lovely new home.”

Dani watches, enraptured, so charmed she almost lets herself forget what’s coming.

“With my penchant for mischief, I’ve been laying low,” Flora crosses the landing, dropping into a squat, and spreads her arms low and wide, “my mums convinced I’d stopped scheming long, long ago.”

But this is something Dani’s been thinking about for a long time.

“So I waited and waited, just biding my time,” Flora paces, tapping, exaggerated, at her wrist, at an imaginary watch there, “growing tall and growing up, with these mums of mine.”

Jamie’s lips ghost along Dani’s ear, and when she speaks, her voice is higher, softer, than she’d like. “A-Level English Language,” she quips, “and we get this?”

“Our life is a good one, happy and loving,” Flora pauses, smiling down at the two of them, “but to be quite honest, there’s been something else budding.”

And Jamie’s wanted it. Jamie’s wanted it for so, so long.

“For they’ve both been thinking, and wanting to boot,” Flora rises, tapping her head in mock thought, “and came to me separately, requesting cahoots.” 

Dani blinks.

Jamie’s brow furrows.

“So I took both deals and aided them ably,” Flora begins to descend the stairs, her hands slipping into her pockets, “keeping their secret easily, gamely.”

Neither Dani nor Jamie take their eyes off Flora, but their hands find each other atop the blanket again, fingers tangling together, squeezing, Dani’s breath caught, somewhere in her chest, Jamie’s heart in her throat.

“But that time is up now, I am afraid,” Flora carefully hops down from the steps, pulling closed fists out of her pockets, “so will you two promise, ‘til the end of your days…” Flora pauses, falling to her knees, the showmanship of story time fading from her face, replaced by a smile, bright and ecstatic and entirely Flora, “to honor and love and hold each other tight,” Flora opens her fists, holding out a hand to each of them, a golden claddagh ring nestled in each, “forever and ever, happ'ly ever after and right?”

Dani stares at the ring in Flora’s hand, her hand trembling in Jamie’s, Jamie staring at Flora, open-mouthed.

Flora only smiles back, her eyes shining. “Go on, then,” she whispers, nodding down at her hands.

Dani moves first, fingers lifting the ring gently, reverential, from Flora’s outstretched palm, and when she turns to Jamie, Jamie’s crying.

Dani bites her lip. “Jamie…” 

“You couldn’t,” Jamie chokes out, fingers graceful as they wrap around the ring in Flora’s other hand, “let me have this one, could you?”

Dani laughs, letting her hand, reaching for Jamie’s left, fall. “Here,” she offers hers instead, voice softer, “you first, then.”

Jamie purses her lips, considering, but then she’s shaking her head and holding up her left hand too, her eyes steady, grounding, on Dani’s. “Together,” she whispers, and Dani’s gasping, a shaky intake of breath, as they slide the rings onto each other’s fingers, Flora marveling, still, at how her mums had managed to pick two identical bands of gold, shining in the low light.

* * *

“Hey munchkin?”

It’s the Monday after Dani had stayed over for the first time, and Flora looks up at Jamie from her spot on the carpet, a mess of papers fanned out in front of her, her legs kicking aimlessly in the air above her.

“How, uh… How was it, Miss Clayton staying over the other night?”

Flora’s face brightens and she scrambles up, crayons all but forgotten as she hurries over to the couch, hopping up onto Jamie’s stomach. Jamie’s rendered momentarily breathless, her copy of _The Awakening_ tumbling to the floor, and Flora waits patiently, excitedly, for Jamie to breathe again, receiving only the arch of an eyebrow when she does. 

“I take it,” Jamie manages after a moment, grin spreading across her face, “you liked it, then?”

“I loved it,” Flora breathes. “She can stay over any night she’d like. Every night, even.”

Jamie laughs. “Yeah?”

Flora nods, earnest and serious, her French braid––a souvenir of Dani’s visit, Dani’s hands tender, tucking and weaving as she’d worked––bobbing behind her as she does.

“You can tell me, you know,” Jamie pushes herself up, serious, Flora crawling backwards on the couch, settling with her knees tucked underneath her, “anything you want. If you didn’t like it, or you weren’t comfortable. If you don’t want it to happen again. I want you to tell me,” she adds, “okay?”

Flora nods again, thoughtful. “May I tell you,” she starts, cautious, running her fingers, distracted, concentrating, along a seam on the couch, “one thing?”

“Please,” Jamie leans forward, biting the inside of her cheek, tempering her expression, “anything.”

“If I’m upset about anything,” Flora’s focused on the fabric beneath her fingers, refusing to look Jamie in the eye, petulance creeping into her voice, “it’s that Miss Clayton isn’t here to make pancakes for us every morning.”

Jamie stares.

Flora chances, daring, a glance up at her mum, her smile innocent and conniving all at once.

Jamie narrows her eyes. 

Flora smiles wider.

They move at the same time, Flora leaping off the couch and Jamie grabbing her, tickling, Flora squealing as she does.

“Pancakes,” Jamie scoffs as Flora’s overtaken by giggles, “next thing I know you’re going to be saying _pants_.”

Flora shakes her head fervently, still giggling.

“Gonna be callin’ me…” Jamie crinkles her nose, unsure if her mouth can even form the word, reluctant to even try, “ _mom_.”

“No!” Flora pulls away as Jamie finally relents, both of them laughing now. “No,” she gasps again, “you’re mum. Only ever mum.”

Jamie raises an eyebrow, waits for the penny to drop.

“But…” Flora says, impish, the corner of her mouth curling up, “I could have a mum and a… Mom.”

Jamie freezes, her laughter dying in her throat.

Flora presses. “Don’t you think?”

“I think…” Jamie reaches up, scratches her forehead. “I think it’s a little too early for that discussion, Flora.”

Flora narrows her eyes, scrutinizing, and Jamie can see gears turning, but… She’ll be damned, she thinks, if she knows what’s going on in Flora’s head.

“She’s already stayed the night, hasn’t she?”

“One night, Flora.”

“But she’ll stay again?”

“Yeah,” Jamie shrugs, “I suppose. If she wants to.”

“I think she wants to,” Flora says firmly, convinced.

“You do?”

Flora nods.

They’re quiet for a minute, then Jamie’s cocking her head at Flora. “You would really eat those… Panmuffins every morning?”

Flora’s answer––“I would eat them _forever_ ”––is immediate and rushed, and sends them both laughing again.

“That’s it, then?” Jamie says when her laughter, Flora’s giggles, die down. “You want Miss Clayton here forever?”

“Forever,” Flora whispers, still catching her breath, nodding, considering the word. “Yes,” she says after a moment, “I think I want that very much.”

Jamie looks at her, long and even.

Flora’s face is wistful, her fists clenching, excited, nervous, at her sides, as if she herself is responsible for their proposed future, holding it tightly in her hands, safeguarding it until her mum and Miss Clayton are ready, finally, to take it in their own.

“Forever,” Flora whispers again, wondering.

“Forever,” Jamie agrees.

And Jamie lets herself want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to yearinla for the pizza, anonymous commenter boosboos for the read over and assurance, and carrot_garden for helping me brainstorm, reading this over, and, as ever, their help navigating our linguistic differences and the English educational system.
> 
> Most of all, thank you all for reading and for your comments and prompts! I've really enjoyed getting to know you all, and they seriously make my day every day.
> 
> I'll have another update (we're back to lil Flora!) out by next week (and maybe start a new AU, too? Wild!), but in the meantime, you can find me over on tumblr at marisas-coulters. Feel free to swing by and drop a message (or a prompt!) any time.


	3. feel like i win when i lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The rules of engagement, as dictated to Dani (“you mustn't take it personal, mum, it’s just that she has _teacher_ handwriting”) and embellished (in seafoam green crayon) by Flora, are as follows:
> 
> Every Sunday for three weeks, they will have game night.
> 
> They will play three games, one selected by each of them each week; Jamie’s being Trivial Pursuit for Juniors (“but I’m not a Junior, I’m a Flora!”), Flora’s Scrabble, and Dani’s Monopoly.
> 
> At the end of those three weeks, the individual who has won the greatest number of games will be crowned a champion, and receive a worthy prize.
> 
> (“What is it,” Flora had asked, “the prize?”
> 
> “Dunno. Depends on who wins, maybe.” Jamie had glanced over at Dani, Dani’s hand pausing, her eyes lifting from the paper in front of her to meet Jamie’s.
> 
> “If I win,” Flora had continued, oblivious, “I want to eat pancakes for dinner. Every night. For a week.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is born from a conversation with Shananigans402 about what a game night between Dani, Jamie, and Flora would look like––and how stubborn each of them would be throughout, in their own ways. We're back with little Flora, too: nine years old and into her summer term, her final with Dani, of 1988.
> 
> It's mostly fluff––and thinking about it, these are all going to be mostly fluff, aren't they?––and a little banter, and a little smut, but honestly? I think that's kind of everything we all need right about now.

Jamie Taylor is a good mum.

Jamie knows she’s a good mum, too, knows she’s delivered on her promise to Flora and then some, on the promise she’d made to both of them, Flora and herself, unspoken and enduring, when Flora had been born.

Like any good parent, Jamie knows her strengths (pep talks; bedtime stories, dearly beloved if unconventional; making Flora laugh, even in the face of broken dolls, skinned knees, or the most dastardly of nightmares). Jamie, too, knows her weaknesses (braids; cooking, with the inexplicable exception of blueberry scones; the nuances, juvenile and parental alike, of primary school politics).

Flora has never been left wanting––Jamie readily relinquishes even the last biscuit––but there are some things, Jamie acknowledges, some seeming staples of childhood as determined by class mums and sitcoms, that have eluded her scope, fierce and loving and so determined, of motherhood. 

Things like vacations, or swim lessons. Birthday parties at the roller rink. Christmas dinners, long tables packed with aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins along the sides, serving dish after serving dish, heaping and hot, decorating the top.

Jamie, for her part, is okay with this. She’s okay with it largely because Flora is okay with it, the two of them happy, fulfilled not by faraway locales or roller limbo under a disco ball, but by each other, splayed across their carpet, coloring, or at Jamie’s greenhouse, Jamie’s hands delicate around Flora’s as she cups the roots of a violet, tucking it gently into soft loam.

For years, this has been enough. Jamie and Flora and their own little world, moving happily through the space of their flat, their neighborhood, through Flora’s school and Jamie’s workspace. 

For years, it has been enough, until:

“What do you mean,” and it’s bright and aghast and painfully American, “you’ve never had game night?”

It’s still Jamie and Flora and their own little world, but now, every Sunday and sometimes other days too, it’s Jamie and Flora and Dani Clayton, stumbling into wholeness, learning and laughing as they navigate entirely new rites of passage. 

(The only wrinkle, Jamie thinks, that’s come with Dani’s arrival into their carefully curated world is that Flora seems, for the first time in her life, to be stuck on the idea of a vacation.

“A _family_ vacation,” Flora corrects her, matter-of-fact, no qualms whatsoever with the word despite the relative newness of Dani and Jamie’s relationship, Jamie huffing out a laugh and ducking her head, sheepish, Dani flushing behind her.

“To _Flora-da_ ,” Flora continues, “to see manatees. And Disneyworld.”

Jamie’s not sure she’ll ever forgive Dani for this one.)

Jamie can practically feel Flora’s ears perk up next to her, Flora aware, suddenly, that a concept so previously unknown to her as _game night_ falls well within the realm of possibility, Jamie watching, resigned, as Flora leans forward over the table, her braid sliding over her shoulder to dangle dangerously over the bowl of macaroni and cheese in front of her.

“We play games, sometimes,” she explains, “but not often. And usually thinking games, like Twenty Questions, or puzzles. We’ve never had a night…” she glances back at Jamie, elated with the prospect, “just for games.”

“No,” Jamie says, her smile tight, her voice tighter, reaching forward to gently sweep Flora’s braid back behind her shoulder, “we sure haven’t.”

Across the table, Dani raises her eyebrows, questioning, amused, at Jamie.

Jamie answers with a shake of her head, slight, unassuming, over Flora’s shoulder.

“Now why,” Dani looks at Flora again, her smile wide, mischievous, “is that?”

Flora shrugs, and, grabbing her fork, digs into her macaroni. “I dunno,” she mumbles around a forkful of noodles, smearing cheese sauce across her mouth as she does, “ask my mum.”

“Jamie?”

Jamie holds Dani’s gaze for a moment, then shrugs. “No particular reason. Just never got around to it, I suppose.”

It’s too casual. Too nonchalant.

Dani purses her lips.

“What? Dani, what?”

“If I didn’t know any better,” Dani says lightly, reaching for her wine glass, and Jamie knows a thinly veiled challenge when she hears one, “I’d say you were scared.”

There’s a flash of hesitation across Jamie’s face, then: “scared? What’s there to be scared of?”

“Oh, I don’t know…” Dani traces a finger idly around the base of her wine glass. “Losing, maybe?”

Jamie scoffs. “Losing to who? Flora?”

Their eyes dart over to Flora, who’s focused intently on spearing macaroni noodles with her fork, sliding one meticulously onto each prong, tongue sticking out in concentration.

“She _is_ our standing classroom Scrabble champion, Jamie.”

“Look!” Flora brandishes her fork at them, beaming. “It’s a macaroni fork!”

“I would be scared,” Dani lowers her voice, placating, her eyes sliding back to Jamie’s, “if I were you, too.”

Jamie narrows her eyes at Dani.

Dani, lifting her wine glass to her lips, smiles innocently around the rim, remnants of the day’s lipstick leaving a wide arc, stained a soft pink, against the glass.

Jamie makes her pay for it later, pressing Dani into her mattress, hovering, teasing and unfulfilling, just above Dani’s lips, Dani’s wrists pinned above her head. 

Dani, for her part, only bites her lip, grinning.

“Not only,” Jamie murmurs, rolling her hips into Dani’s, doing her best to ignore the delighted gasp below her, “did you challenge me in front of Flora tonight,” she leans down, tugging Dani’s bottom lip between her teeth, “but you also,” she rolls her hips again, harder, before leaning back, just out of Dani’s reach, “really came over to my flat for a nice date”––Dani cants her hips up into Jamie’s and Jamie tuts at her, leaning back further still––“and made us macaroni and cheese for supper.”

“I,” Dani’s still grinning, is still pleased with herself––hasn’t stopped being pleased with herself, Jamie thinks, since earlier––and pushes against Jamie’s grip, her back arching, “was invited over for an easy, school night dinner,” she slides a leg up along Jamie’s, wrapping it snugly around her waist, “or was I misinformed?”

“Don’t,” Jamie groans, Dani’s heel pressing into the small of her back, leveraging, Jamie’s hand slipping, distracted, away from Dani’s wrists, “put this on me, Miss Clayton.”

“Besides,” Dani rocks sideways, flipping them, “you liked my macaroni and cheese. And,” she ducks her head, pressing open-mouthed kisses to Jamie’s neck, “at least I had the sense to serve you a bottle of wine with it.” 

There’s a pause, and then Jamie feels Dani’s shoulders start to shake, can feel giggles erupt against her neck. “What?”

“It’s basically a wine and cheese night, isn’t it?” Dani manages, breathless, “and nobody hates wine and cheese nights.”

Jamie bites the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing, determined not to give Dani the satisfaction. “I have half the mind,” she breathes into Dani’s hair, “to turn over and go to sleep right now. That was terrible, Dani.”

Dani hums, sliding a leg between Jamie’s, and Jamie can feel her smile, full and smug, against her neck. “You liked it,” she accuses, “just like you liked my macaroni and cheese.”

It’s a trick Jamie knows well by now, but it works just the same.

“I–– Maybe,” Jamie gasps, Dani’s thigh pressing softly up, her teeth nipping at Jamie’s pulse point, “Dani, _fuck_ ––”

“Just you wait until I find some Velveeta in this county,” Dani lifts her head, coming to grin against Jamie’s lips as she slips her hand into Jamie’s pajama shorts, “then I’ll really rock your world.”

* * *

The next Saturday–– _their_ Saturday, Jamie is quick to point out––finds them at Woolworths, standing in front of wide shelves laden with board games, one of Dani’s hands on her hips, appraising, a Scrabble box, a pleading request from Flora as they’d slipped out the door, tucked under the other, Jamie’s hands shoved into her pockets. 

“Which one are you going to choose?” Dani’s eyes slide excitedly from one colorful box to the next, taking in the array of choices before her, tugging her bottom lip between her teeth.

There’s a nostalgia here, a warm haze blanketing Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers, that Dani hadn’t expected. It feels like she’s nine years old again, knees tucked neatly underneath her, pigtails bobbing as she counts out Monopoly money, each bill crisp and satisfying against her outstretched palm. It had been Eddie paying her (“fork it over, O’Mara”), his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose, crinkled and surly, Judy and Carson laughing from their sides of the card table, a Friday night staple of the O’Maras’ otherwise tidy living room. “This one’s a shark, Eddie,” Judy had chuckled, “you’d better watch out for her.”

It doesn’t bother her, the memory. They haven’t for a while.

Not since Jamie, shuffling into her classroom, head low and shoulders slumped, dropping into a chair in the back row.

Dani had given up that life––the O’Maras’ living room, Friday nights around the folding table, Judy––long before she’d met Jamie, before she’d even left Iowa, had ceded her childhood to those she’d left behind, relegating herself to transience in the O’Maras’ memories, Danielle Clayton the specter of impossibility imprinted.

With no childhood to claim, no family save for benign nostalgia, a ghost in itself, she supposes, Dani Clayton has no choice but to build her own, time and age and lineage, gnarled and rotting, be damned.

And God, what an opportunity it is.

Game night with the Taylors is different. Theirs. It isn’t a desperate cater to Dani’s every whim, an insistence, whether pitied or supplicating, that she choose, that Dani be the sole arbiter of cheer, forcing on her the burden, once again, of an entire family’s happiness. 

Instead, it’s something new. Something shared. Something the three of them are building together.

Still… Dani expects mild indifference from Jamie, still not entirely sold on the idea, a one-shouldered shrug, maybe, or a contemplative twist of her lips. 

What she doesn’t expect is the grin that breaks out across Jamie’s face, the way her hands shoot out to wrap around a dark teal box, snatching it from the shelf, dragging it to her, clutching it to her chest.

Dani blinks.

Jamie only looks at her, delighted, and she looks more like Flora in that moment than Dani thinks she’s seen yet, all guileless joy and breathless excitement.

“Trivial Pursuit?” 

Jamie nods, eyes sparkling.

Dani wants nothing more in that moment than to splay her hands across Jamie’s cheeks, to pull her in, to pepper with kisses the gleeful raise of her brow, the flushed apples of her cheeks, the bow of her lips, but–– “Jamie, Flora’s a _child_.”

“Yeah, and?”

“Don’t you think that’s a little unfair to her?”

“What?”

Dani waves a hand at the box, Jamie’s arms tightening instinctively around it. “Flora can’t answer those questions.”

“Sure she can. Besides,” Jamie squares her shoulders, setting her chin, obstinate, “you know more than me how… What was it…” Jamie furrows her brow, her eyes rolling towards the ceiling in mock thought, “‘Exceptionally bright’ she is.”

Dani falters, softens. “That’s what I wrote in her report at the end of spring term.”

“It is.”

“You remembered that?”

“I did.”

Dani’s lost, once again, in thoughts of pulling Jamie to her, of pressing their lips together, of sliding her arms around Jamie’s neck and holding her close in the middle of the toy aisle, Barbie and Skipper’s prying eyes be damned.

“So,” Jamie’s voice, cautious, hopeful, tugs Dani back to reality, “Trivial Pursuit?”

“Trivial Pursuit for _Juniors_ ,” Dani counters firmly, reaching out to pluck the slim red box from the shelf, offering it to Jamie with an acute raise of her eyebrows.

It’s one Jamie’s long learned not to argue with and she sighs, arms slackening, looking longingly at the box in her hands before returning it to the shelf. “Trivial Pursuit for Juniors,” she mumbles, capitulating.

Dani beams at her––it’s one from her classroom, Jamie knows immediately, one Dani keeps in her back pocket for her students, a reward for their begrudging acquiescence––and turns back to the shelf, pursing her lips.

“What d’you reckon you’re gonna get?”

“I’m looking…” Dani scans the shelves, her eyes flitting quickly, methodically, across each one, her fingers reaching, hovering just before each shelf as they follow. 

It’s easy, Jamie thinks, not for the first time, to lose herself in Dani. In Dani’s earnest commitment, her no-nonsense cheer, the way she rocks up, onto her tiptoes, leaning forward, straining for the top shelf.

Jamie’s hands are wrapping around Dani’s waist before she can help it.

“Jamie,” it’s a sigh this time, tumbling out of Dani’s lips on a shaky exhale, Dani’s hips tilting back into Jamie’s touch all the same.

“Just spotting you,” Jamie whispers, and she can hear Dani’s chuckle, hear that Dani doesn’t for a second believe her, hear that Dani doesn’t care. 

Dani reaches back up again, Jamie’s hands tightening around her, her fingers fanned out across Dani’s waist, pressing softly into her ribcage. 

She falls back onto her heels, Monopoly held firm in her hands, Scrabble still pinned underneath her arm, and lets herself lean into Jamie, sighing again.

“Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“My place or yours?”

“Mm,” Dani’s fingers ghost along Jamie’s, still wrapped around her waist, “mine. It’s closer, we’ve wasted enough time here, and,” she twists herself around to face Jamie, her grin goofy and mischievous and one of Jamie’s absolute favorites, “I have plans for you.”

“Oh yeah?” Jamie raises her eyebrows. “You have plans for me?”

Dani nods.

“If memory serves,” Jamie lets go of Dani’s waist, stepping backwards, “you’re the one who wanted to… Waste time here in the first place.”

Dani crinkles her nose at her, laughing, and then she’s turning on her heel, making her way down the aisle.

“It’s not fair, by the way,” Jamie says, following her as they wind through the aisles, making their way to the front registers.

“What’s not fair?”

“Trivial Pursuit for Juniors.”

Dani barely glances back over her shoulder at Jamie, barely tosses her a pitying look.

“It’s gonna be easier for you to win now, too, is all. Everyone gets an easier shot at beating me.”

“Good thing you like a challenge, then,” Dani murmurs, and Jamie’s opening her mouth to respond when Dani squeals. 

Jamie’s hand flies out immediately, Jamie catching herself, stilling, dropping her arm before she can connect with Dani, keenly aware they’re no longer in the relative privacy of the toy aisle. “You okay?”

Dani nods, pointing ahead of them. “The _candy_ , Jamie,” she whispers, awestruck, “oh my God.”

“It’s pic ‘n’ mix, Dani,” but Jamie's correction is wrapped, enamored and half-hearted, around a wide smile. 

“Pic ‘n’ mix,” Dani parrots, Jamie groaning at her imitation accent, Dani grinning, laughing, as she shoves the games from her hands into Jamie’s, grabbing for a plastic bag, unfurling it with a shake.

Jamie watches her, eyebrows raised, as Dani makes her way down the aisle of clear plastic bins, fastidious and patient and so indulgent in her deliberation.

She only pauses when she gets to the end, realizing suddenly Jamie isn’t next to her, glancing nervously right, then left, her brow furrowing when she sees Jamie watching her, still, from the other end of the aisle. “You’re not gonna get any?”

“Nah,” Jamie ducks her head, crossing to Dani, “I’m good.”

Dani’s brow furrows further. “But you love sweets.” 

“I love,” Jamie slides behind Dani, peering over her shoulder into the plastic bag she’s hastily filling with cola bottles and jelly snakes, “baked goods, not… Christ, Dani, are those lemon sherbets? What are you, seventy?” She laughs. “I had you figured as a mum for Flora, not her gran.”

It slips out before Jamie has time to realize what she’s saying, and she can hear Dani’s breath, sharp and hopeful, before Dani’s responding, breezily, “and just what would be more age appropriate?”

Jamie purses her lips, considering, grateful for Dani’s uncharacteristically graceful sidestep.

“For a… Mom, I mean.”

Ah, Jamie thinks. There it is.

“The, uh,” Jamie swallows, is glad she’s still behind Dani, glad that Dani can’t see her flush, “the strawberry and cream, maybe.”

Dani laughs, wide and bright, twisting around. “And you called _me_ old!”

Jamie shrugs. “S’the best flavor.”

“I thought you didn’t like pic ‘n’ mix, anyway.”

“You asked, Miss Clayton, and I answered.” Jamie grins, impish. “Not one to fail a pop quiz, me.”

Dani shakes her head, trying, failing to bite back a smirk, and then she’s turning back around, busying herself as she twists her bag neatly shut.

They’re halfway back to Dani’s flat, Dani pulling a piece of bubblegum out of her bag and popping it into her mouth, when Jamie says it.

“It’s mum, by the way,” her voice is small, careful, “not… That word, the one that you said.”

“What?”

“The…” Jamie crinkles her nose, “American version.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah, that. That’s going to have to be one you… That’s going to have to be one you get right.”

“Mm,” Dani ducks her head, glances over at Jamie, “is it?”

“Mmhmm.”

Dani bites her lip, beaming, and they walk in silence for a while.

They’re almost to Dani’s flat when she speaks again. “Hey Jamie?”

“Yeah?”

Dani grins, and, blowing a bubble, lets it pop in Jamie’s face. 

* * *

The rules of engagement, as dictated to Dani (“you mustn't take it personal, mum, it’s just that she has _teacher_ handwriting”) and embellished (in seafoam green crayon) by Flora, are as follows:

Every Sunday for three weeks, they will have game night.

They will play three games, one selected by each of them each week; Jamie’s being Trivial Pursuit for Juniors (“but I’m not a Junior, I’m a Flora!”), Flora’s Scrabble, and Dani’s Monopoly.

At the end of those three weeks, the individual who has won the greatest number of games will be crowned a champion, and receive a worthy prize.

(“What is it,” Flora had asked, “the prize?”

“Dunno. Depends on who wins, maybe.” Jamie had glanced over at Dani, Dani’s hand pausing, her eyes lifting from the paper in front of her to meet Jamie’s, Dani’s eyelids fluttering as Jamie had grinned, winked.

“If I win,” Flora had continued, oblivious, emphatic, Dani ducking her head, “I want to eat pancakes for dinner. Every night. For a _week_.”

“Sure, munchkin. If that’s what you want.”

“Jamie!”

“What?”

“Can you,” Flora had tugged on Dani’s sleeve after that, smiling innocently up at her, “write that part down as well, please?”)

Should, for whatever reason, there not be a clear champion after three weeks, they will resort to a fourth week tiebreaker, and one of them will be selected, at random, to choose the game. 

The final rule had been Jamie’s contribution, an eager arbiter in the rulemaking process despite her earlier reticence.

“What changed?” Dani asks on Sunday, leaning back against Jamie’s kitchen counter, watching the delicate twist of Jamie’s wrist as she pours two glasses of wine.

“How d’you mean?”

“When it first came up, game night was the last thing you wanted to do. But now… Now you’re… You’re fussing over which edition of Trivial Pursuit to get, you’re… Insisting on rules about hypotheticals. Unbiased selection processes. What changed?”

Jamie chuckles. “Fussing, am I?”

Dani’s head drops, her jaw jutting out. “C’mon, you practically threw a temper tantrum in the store.”

“I did not,” Jamie pivots, leaning around Dani to grab one of Flora’s favorite mugs (ceramic, a clean white with hand painted leaves drifting down the side, a small, sculpted rabbit situated inside the cup, waiting, jovially, for its bearer to finish her beverage), “practically throw a temper tantrum.”

“No?”

“I just––” Jamie slips Flora’s mug into the microwave, fingers curling the dial to set the timer. “It’s just not fair, is all. Makes it easier for you both to win.”

“So you _are_ scared.” Dani’s gloating, and Jamie hates it and loves it in equal measure.

“No,” Jamie reaches into one of the cabinets behind Dani, craning upward, tugging down a tub of cocoa powder, “I’m not.”

“What is it then?” Dani turns her body towards Jamie, the soft click of the microwave counting down above them, and leans in, eyes wide, curious. “What’s the catch?”

Jamie turns to match her, slouching, bracing herself on the counter with an elbow, the corner of her mouth quirking up almost lazily. “Just wanna win,” she declares simply. “Can’t bear to lose, really.”

“And just what,” Dani feels closer, Dani must be closer, but Jamie hasn’t noticed her moving at all, “prize are you thinking of?”

Jamie swallows, wets her lips. Opens her mouth.

The timer goes off, and Flora’s voice is quick to follow, floating in from the living room. “Does that mean we’ll be starting soon?”

Dani exhales, slumping back against the counter, and Jamie’s jaw clenches, once, twice. “Just give us one more minute, then we’ll be right there!”

There’s an impatient huff from the living room, and then they’re both giggling, Jamie reaching up for Flora’s mug, taking it out of the microwave, stirring in the cocoa powder. 

“Don’t forget the marshmallow,” Dani murmurs, and Jamie nods her thanks, reaching back into the cupboard for a jar of marshmallow fluff.

“What about you?” Jamie asks, twisting at the lid, scowling, holding the jar wordlessly out to Dani.

“What about me what?”

“It was your idea to do this whole thing in the first place. What’s got you so excited about it?”

Dani flushes. “I just…” She wraps her fingers around the top of the jar and twists, the lid coming undone with a soft pop, and passes it back to Jamie. “I thought it might be nice–– _Would_ be nice, I mean, to have something… To have something that was ours. Yours, Flora’s, and mine. Our own tradition, you know? We don’t… We don’t have to do it every week or anything, but…” 

Jamie purses her lips, thoughtful, doling a spoonful of marshmallow fluff into Flora’s mug.

“It’s ours,” Dani’s voice is quiet, “you know?”

“It is,” Jamie’s voice is quiet to match, Jamie dipping the spoon back into the jar, lifting it, laden with fluff, to Dani’s lips.

Dani’s mouth curls into a smile, curls wider still as she watches Jamie’s eyes slink down to her lips, lids heavy as Dani takes the spoon into her mouth. “Besides,” Dani says cooly once she’s done, watching Jamie’s tongue dart out to clean what’s left on the spoon, “I’m looking forward to winning, myself.”

Jamie narrows her eyes. “Dani…” 

But then Dani’s grinning, grabbing their wine glasses, and sweeping into the living room.

“Okay, Flora,” Jamie can hear the change in Dani’s pitch, can hear her voice wavering along the line between teacher and… 

Jamie shakes her head, and, grabbing Flora’s mug, makes her way to the living room.

* * *

Trivial Pursuit does not go according to Jamie’s plans.

For one, the questions are easy. Too easy. Of course, she thinks, Flora knows that _sap_ is the common name for the juice inside a tree, and of course, she thinks, Flora knows that it’s their legs crickets use to chirp.

It doesn’t help, either, when the latter earns Flora her first wedge, and she subsequently beams over at Dani. “I’m very lucky,” she says to Jamie, scowling beside her, “to have such a wonderful teacher. I’m not sure I would have gotten that, otherwise.”

“If only your mum was a gardener,” Jamie grumbles, reaching for her wine, “if only she’d been telling you all about crickets before you knew how to walk.”

It helps, Jamie admits, a little bit, when she feels Dani’s foot, gentle and prodding, nudge against her ankle under the coffee table.

“Sounds like a good mum,” Dani murmurs, and Jamie, just for a moment, smiles.

Another thing: Jamie is clever. Smart, even. Jamie _knows things_.

She does not, however, waste her time learning things, knowing things, indulging in things she doesn’t care about.

Life, Jamie knows, is too short.

(She doesn’t have the time––or the patience––anyway.)

The problem is that Jamie keeps landing on spaces, keeps drawing cards, about exactly the things she doesn’t care about.

“How am I supposed to know,” she crosses her arms, jaw tight, “what a Falkor is?” 

“Well,” Dani explains calmly, “you watch _The Neverending Story_.”

“How could I watch _The Neverending Story_ ,” Jami counters, impatient, “if it’s never ending? I’d still be there, wouldn’t I?”

Flora giggles, hot chocolate staining her upper lip. “It’s not actually never ending,” she chirps, “it’s only… What was it, Miss Clayton? Hyperbole?”

Jamie reaches over, her wine glass emptied three cards ago, and wraps a hand around Dani’s, bringing it, desperately, to her lips.

“Are you going to answer?” Dani’s almost apologetic when she asks––almost––and when Jamie shakes her head, when Dani grins, that, Jamie notes, is the third thing.

Dani is sitting across from her, Flora situated between them, sugar high cresting, crashing, on her right. 

Dani is the closest player to her left.

Dani gets all of the questions Jamie can’t answer.

Dani, after a low qualification of “we’ll watch it, okay? Together?”, is proudly proclaiming Falkor to be a luck dragon.

Dani is rolling again.

Dani is taking that last bloody wedge.

Dani is winning Trivial Pursuit.

The fourth thing, though––

Dani is pressing kisses, lingering and reverential, down Jamie’s torso, following, meandering, the dark freckles dotting their way down Jamie’s chest, down Jamie’s sternum, down the shivering plane of Jamie’s stomach. 

Dani is tugging Jamie’s sleep shorts down her legs.

Dani is nudging apart Jamie’s thighs.

Dani is whispering “sorry, baby,” and Dani’s lips are parting around Jamie’s clit, and Jamie’s head is falling back onto the pillow behind her.

“You’re not,” Jamie gasps later, coming down, her fingers still tangled in Dani’s hair, flexing gently against her scalp, holding her in place. “You’re not sorry at all.”

“I’m not,” Dani breathes, turning her head, nuzzling, open-mouthed, into the crook of Jamie’s thigh. “I’m really not, Jamie.”

“Again, then,” Jamie says, tugging softly at Dani’s hair, and Dani grins.

Losing, Jamie’s willing to admit, her free hand flying to her mouth to muffle a keening whimper, might not be as bad as it’s cracked up to be.

Besides, she thinks, any lingering coherence slipping away as Dani’s tongue sweeps across her, as Dani slides two fingers inside, as Dani moans into Jamie’s skin, it’s best two out of three.

Jamie can still win.

* * *

“That’s not fair! Jamie, that’s not fair!” Dani turns, her eyes pleading, to Flora. “Flora, tell her. Tell her it’s not fair.”

Flora glances, sideways, at Jamie, then back to Dani. “I’m sorry Miss Clayton, but…” 

“Flora! Flora, please.”

“You said it yourself,” Flora says carefully, “I _am_ the standing classroom Scrabble champion, and you always tell us in the classroom that words only count if they’re spelled correctly, so…” 

“This _is_ spelled correctly!”

“It’s not, though,” Flora gesticulates, apologetic, to the board, “don’t you see?”

“You spelled it,” Jamie chimes in, unhelpfully, with a mouth full of biscuit, “r-e-a-l-i-z-e. That’s wrong. It’s r-e-a-l-i-s-e.”

“It’s not _wrong,_ Jamie.”

“Maybe not in America, but,” Jamie shrugs, “we’re not in America, are we? Drop the zed, free up that triple word score square or play a different word. Provided,” she reaches for her wine, “that one’s not spelled incorrectly, too.”

“I can’t drop the _z_ ,” Dani says, pointed, “because I don’t have an _s_.” 

“Then perhaps,” Flora bites her lip, apology in her voice belied by the smugness shining in her eyes, “you ought to play a different word.”

“Plenty of options available to you,” Jamie offers, grinning. “Look, ‘lie’ for three points, ‘are’ for three points, ‘lair’ for… Look at that, four points––”

“Jamie.”

Jamie laughs. “I’m only trying to be helpful, Dani, since you seem to be struggling and all––”

“I’m not struggling!”

Flora and Jamie glance at each other across the table.

“I’m not!”

“Of course not, no.”

“It’s not my fault,” Dani huffs, glowering at the letters arranged, haphazard, in front of her, “no one knows how to spell anything in this country.”

Flora giggles, and Jamie rolls her eyes.

“Look,” Jamie says, leaning forward and reaching across the board to wrap a hand around Dani’s, “how about this? When we go to America, we’ll… We’ll make sure to bring Scrabble with us, this exact game, board and pieces and all, and we’ll play by your rules there. Your spellings. It’s only right. In the meantime, we just… You just have to play by our rules here. British English in England and American English in America, yeah?”

It is not, entirely, a ploy. 

Dani knows it is, a little bit, that it’s the deferral of what would be, unquestionably, an easy victory for her, a second win––in a row––to cement herself as game night champion. It’s an indeterminate suspension, a placation painted on the canvas of an opaque future, but… 

It is also, more than anything else, a promise.

Jamie had said “when,” not “if.”

 _When we go to America_ , Dani thinks. When they go together, the three of them, their future still so unformed and yet certainly shared, when Dani takes Flora and Jamie by the hands and shows them the places she’d grown up, the places so integral and now so lost to the shape of her, when home, Dani realizes with a pang in her chest, finally comes to Iowa.

 _When we go to America_.

“Yeah,” Dani’s eyelids flutter, her breath hitching, but she holds Jamie’s gaze, “yeah, I’d like that.” 

“Right,” Jamie swallows, “good.”

They’re interrupted by the soft scrape of wood on board, Flora gathering up Dani’s tiles and dropping them, eyes bright, in front of her. “In the meantime,” she offers, tone polite, “perhaps I can help you brush up on your British spelling.”

Dani laughs. “For next time?”

“Yes,” Flora nods seriously, “for next time.”

Dani only nods, a “thank you, Flora,” murmured as she picks out tiles from the pile in front of her, arranging them neatly, elsewhere, on the board.

“Ire?” Jamie bleats. “You had the pieces to get four points!”

“I’m not going to win, anyway,” Dani says, smile playing at the corners of her mouth, “you two made sure of that.”

“So?”

“So,” Dani continues, taking a deep sip of her wine, “maybe it’s not about the points.”

Jamie scoffs. “It is, Miss Clayton,” she plucks a tile from the lineup in front of her and places it on the board, linking it to the same “a” Dani had tried to use earlier, “always,” she drops each subsequent tile slowly, satisfied and smug, “about the points.” She leans back, glancing over at Flora, ready with the pencil and score sheet.

“Favourite,” Flora reads, “f-a-v-o-u-r-i-t-e. Fifteen points, times three for the triple word score. So that’s… Forty-five. Forty-five points!” 

Jamie grins, triumphant, over at Dani, and doesn’t stop grinning for the rest of the night.

Not when Flora declares her the winner, Dani coming in, solidly, at third place.

Not when they tuck Flora into bed, Flora fast to fall asleep, babbling about whales and word scores as she does. 

Not when she’s washing their wine glasses, Dani loading the dishwasher, their hips pressed together, beside her.

Not when they’re in bed, Dani’s legs, starting to shake, wrapped around her waist, Jamie’s fingers curling, insistent, into her.

“You really,” Jamie murmurs, breaking their kiss, Dani whimpering, leaning up, chasing her lips, “are my,” she leans down, kissing Dani again, hard and fast, “favourite, you know.”

Dani groans, even as her hips cant, even as she arches, urging herself closer, still, to Jamie. “If you weren’t––” Her fingers dig into Jamie’s shoulder blades, leaving sweeping crescents in their wake. “If you weren’t so–– _Jamie_ –– If I wasn’t–– Wasn’t about to–– _Fuck_ , Jamie, just like that, please––”

She comes, hard and shuddering, clutching desperately at Jamie, and Jamie kisses her again, deeper now, drowning out the sound of Dani’s cries. 

Jamie’s grin is back when she pulls away, brushing a thumb tenderly over the swell of Dani’s cheek. “You’d what?” 

“God, I’d…” Dani presses the heel of her hand to her forehead, still catching her breath, closing her eyes. “I’d…” 

“Feel your ire start to rise?”

Dani groans again, swatting playfully at Jamie’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry,” Jamie slides off of Dani, curling into her side, “there’s plenty of time for that yet.”

“Oh?” Dani wraps an arm around Jamie’s shoulders, drawing her closer.

“Mmhmm,” Jamie slings an arm across Dani’s stomach, “when I beat you at Monopoly next week. Earn my rightful title of game night champion.”

Dani laughs.

“What?”

“When you beat me at Monopoly,” she turns her head, pressing a chaste kiss to Jamie’s forehead, “okay.”

“Just you wait, Dani Clayton. We’ll be doing this same thing next week, mark my words.”

“Good thing we’re going to sleep,” Dani murmurs, closing her eyes, “because now you can keep dreaming all you’d like.”

* * *

They do not do the same next week.

The next week, instead, finds them lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, utterly bewildered. 

“I thought you said you were a shark when it comes to Monopoly,” Jamie says, hollow, “thought you Americans were good at… Capitalism.”

“Thought you said you were gonna beat me at Monopoly,” Dani responds, equally empty, “thought you were gonna be game night champion.”

They’re quiet for a long time after that, lost in the nighttime shadows decorating Jamie’s ceiling.

“When,” Jamie says suddenly, rolling onto her side to peer at Dani, “did she get so good at math?”

“She’s always been good at math,” Dani replies, just as suddenly, just as readily, as if she’s been blazing the same trail in her own brain, following Jamie’s thought process step-by-step, “but this isn’t math. This is racketeering.” 

Jamie groans. “Flora,” she flops back over onto her back, “racketeering. My daughter, the white collar criminal.” 

“Hot chocolate-stained collar, you mean.”

Jamie laughs, and Dani glances over at her, smiling.

“I can’t believe she beat us both,” Jamie sighs, staring absently upward, “and it wasn’t even close.”

“It wasn’t even close,” Dani muses, “not at all.”

“Do you know how humiliating it is,” Jamie lets her head fall to the side, regarding Dani, the corner of her lips quirking up, “to have to fork over all your remaining cash to your nine year-old daughter?”

“I can’t say I do,” Dani turns her head to match Jamie’s, smiling softly, “but I do know how it feels to be a nine year-old rolling in Monopoly money.”

Jamie raises her eyebrows. “And you never told me! How was I supposed to know I was dating a former child mogul?”

Dani’s smile stretches, wider, across her face. “You know,” she says, feigning nonchalance, “this might be the first game of Monopoly I’ve ever lost.”

Jamie snorts. “Show-off.”

Dani giggles, leaning in, pressing a quick kiss to the tip of Jamie’s nose. “You’re not impressed?” She squirms closer to Jamie, tangling their legs together. “Not even a little?”

“Might’ve been,” Jamie purses her lips, “if your first loss hadn’t just been to a nine year-old.”

Dani hums. “Maybe that’s the way of the world, though,” she reaches out, threading her fingers through Jamie’s, continuing, with an air of melodrama, “someone else, Flora… Rising up behind me to take my place.”

Jamie laughs. “Jesus, Dani, listen to yourself. You’re thirty-one, not dead. It’s just Monopoly, isn’t it?”

“Didn’t think it was ‘just Monopoly’ when your title of game night champion was on the line.”

“So you admit it, then? It’s my title? Rightfully?”

“No,” Dani’s brows crease together, “no, I didn’t say that. You know I didn’t say that.”

“You did,” Jamie crows, gleeful, “you said it.”

“You know what I meant,” Dani protests, but then Jamie’s ducking her head, peppering her neck with kisses, and Dani lets her head tip back, giggling, and forgets the rest of it.

* * *

They’re back at Woolworths the next Sunday, standing, three in a row, in the toy aisle.

Jamie’s hands are already laden with two pic ‘n’ mix bags, one Dani’s and the other Flora’s, Flora’s topped, sneakily, Jamie had thought, with an extra handful of strawberry and cream. Flora, meanwhile, is craning her neck, taking in each and every game on the shelves, scrutinizing them, while Dani waits, patient, nervous, to reach for her choice. 

Of course Flora had won Monopoly.

Of course it had been Flora’s name, drawn from a red, multi-purpose plastic kitchen bowl, to determine the tiebreaking game.

And of course, Dani thinks now, absolutely miserable, Flora is pointing, excitedly, at Operation.

“Oi, Flora,” and a spark of hope surges in Dani’s chest at Jamie’s voice, grousing, “do you have to pick the most annoying game?”

“It’s only annoying,” Flora offers, matter-of-fact, eyes sparkling, “if you’re bad at it. It’s quite simple, really.”

Jamie cocks her head. Purses her lips. Nods.

Dani feels the spark in her chest flicker out, smothered by a smirk and Jamie’s voice, haughty now.

“Yeah,” Jamie says, almost too casually, eyes sliding over to Dani, “yeah, you’re right. A lot of… What is it, Dani? Fine motor?”

“Mmhmm,” Dani’s voice is tight, her fists clenching at her sides.

Jamie grins. “Fine motor it is, then. Don’t think any of us are too bad at that, do you?”

There’s a strangled noise in Dani’s throat, and then she’s reaching for the box on the shelf, resigned to her fate.

Dani is terrible at Operation.

It’s not that her fine motor is bad. It’s good, great, even, where it counts: cutting classroom artwork into careful shapes, scissors arcing gracefully around loops and whorls; folding her laundry (and Flora’s, and Jamie’s) into neat squares, right sleeve, left sleeve, bottom, top; twisting, she adds to herself, indulgent, her fingers into Jamie, curling until Jamie comes with a gasp and Dani’s name on her lips. 

It’s just that Dani’s clumsy.

Dani’s clumsy and anxious and her hands have a tendency to shake even on a good day, even on a day when a title like game night champion isn’t on the line, even on a day when everyone isn’t watching her, even on a day when she doesn’t have to watch Jamie’s fingers expertly maneuver a pair of tweezers, light and pressing and so deliberate––

“Miss Clayton, are you alright? You’re flushed.”

Jamie freezes, tweezers hovering over the patient’s charley horse.

It really, Dani thinks, can’t get much worse.

“Yeah, Miss Clayton,” Jamie echoes, and Dani doesn’t need to look at her to recognize the grin on her face, “you good?”

“Fine,” Dani manages, reaching for her glass, “I’m fine.”

“Right then,” Jamie shrugs, “suit yourself.” 

And then Jamie effortlessly extracts the tiny plastic horse from the board without even looking at it. Grinning, instead, at Dani the entire time.

“Your turn,” Jamie says cheerfully, dragging her fingers over Dani’s as she passes her the tweezers.

It is, Dani thinks, agonized, worse.

She immediately bungles removing the broken heart––“have to say,” Jamie quips, “feels like a good thing you’re not an expert in breaking hearts”––and passes the tweezers off to Flora, who makes quick work of the wish bone. 

And so it goes, Flora and Jamie taking turns handily removing pieces from the board, collecting them in messy piles in front of them, while Dani, not for lack of trying, collides with the wired edges of the board, loud and shrill, every time.

It doesn’t help, either, that Jamie’s foot has been sliding up Dani’s leg under the table since she first caught Dani staring, that it gets higher and higher with each turn.

It doesn’t help that Dani’s finished her glass of wine and moved on to Jamie’s, the corner of Jamie’s mouth curling up every time she catches Dani reaching for it.

It doesn’t help that Jamie’s about to win, that the bread basket, that coveted, goddamn bread basket, is the last piece, that Jamie’s turning to smirk at Dani as she dips the tweezers in.

It buzzes.

Jamie misses, and the game buzzes, and Jamie’s mouth is dropping open, Flora’s gasping, and Dani is laughing, loud and bursting.

Dani doubles over the table, tears pricking the corners of her eyes, Jamie staring, dumbstruck, at the board, and Flora, smiling, serene, is reaching over to take the tweezers gently from Jamie’s hand, dispatching the bread basket easily, dropping it, pleased with herself, in front of her mother.

“There,” she says, simply, beaming, “game night champion.”

Dani takes the lead on getting Flora into bed––“even game night champions need a good night’s sleep,” she whispers, divulging, over the table after they’ve cleaned up––while Jamie, content with her own company and a sullen silence, washes up in the kitchen.

She’s settling their wine glasses in the drying rack when she feels Dani’s arms wrap around her from behind, Dani’s lips soft against her ear.

“I’m still impressed, you know.”

Jamie stills for a moment, pausing, underneath her.

Dani pulls her, tighter, against her.

“Hard not to be impressed,” and Dani can hear Jamie’s wry smile, smiles herself, “when you’re pretty shit at it yourself.”

Dani nips at her ear. “Am not.”

“All evidence,” Jamie’s hands drift down to cover Dani’s, sliding their fingers together, “seems to point to the contrary.”

“So let me prove you wrong,” Dani presses her hips forward, pinning Jamie against the counter, murmuring, “let me show you just how good my fine motor skills are.”

“Yeah,” Jamie lets go of Dani’s hands, turning, her voice hoarse as she lets Dani tug her out of the kitchen and down down the hall, “okay.” 

* * *

Jamie Taylor is a good mum. 

Jamie knows she’s a good mum, too, even if they’re sitting down at the dinner table, Dani sliding plates of her syrup-soaked, overpuffed pancakes in front of them, for the third night that week. It’d been a promise, after all, made to Flora, recorded in precise pen and curling crayon, just over three weeks ago. 

Like any good parent, Jamie knows her strengths (knowledge both general and specialized, with the exception of the mundane; a newfound flexibility, whether in investing in new traditions or a willingness, given the right locale, to forgo her own orthographic inclinations; dogged determination). Jamie, too, knows her weaknesses (luck dragons; losing; Dani Clayton).

Flora has never been left wanting––she’d even been allowed the title of game night champion, regardless, Jamie tells herself, of whether or not it had been an intentional abdication––but there is one thing, Jamie recognizes, that has eluded the scope, insular and perfect as it may be, of their two-person family.

Something that isn’t required for a family, not really. Something that Jamie knows hasn’t been a deficit to them so far, something that doesn’t render the last nine years of their life incomplete or lesser by any means. Something that’s just, now, as infallible as the two of them.

For years, they had been enough. Jamie and Flora in their own little world, moving contentedly through dinners of boxed macaroni and cheese, unornamented hot chocolate, through the tedium of Twenty Questions and the feat of floor puzzles.

For years, it has been enough, until:

“So,” Flora’s voice had been light, careful, “since my prize is pancakes for dinner every night for a week, and Miss Clayton is the one who makes pancakes, then that means Miss Clayton will be living with us for a week, right?”

And then there’s no going back.

Then it’s Jamie and Flora and Dani Clayton, building a life together from pieces both familiar and not, constant and sure, well on their way to becoming a family.

Dani Clayton, Jamie thinks, watching Dani drop a heaping spoonful of blueberries on top of Flora’s pancakes, laughing, already planning their next round of game nights, is a good mum, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Shananigans402 for talking this idea out with me in its earliest stages, and to carrot_garden for their orthographic wisdom, showing me the joys of Woolworths, and the all-encompassing title of “mac and cheese moms.”
> 
> Thanks to you all, as always, for loving this little universe as much as I do, and sticking with it. I love reading your comments and your prompts, and can't wait to hear what y'all have to say this time around.
> 
> I'll have another oneshot up in the next week or two (who let me start another AU while I was still working on these?), but in the meantime, please feel free to leave a message here or visit me over on tumblr at marisas-coulters.

**Author's Note:**

> Language from the original series belongs to the lovely folks who wrote it.
> 
> Title is from Abba's "When I Kissed the Teacher," and I maintain that it's the _Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again_ soundtrack version. Chapter titles, since I've run out of lines but still love a theme, are cherry-picked from the rest of Abba's discography.


End file.
